by Anna Gavalda
‘I don’t recognise you.’
‘Are you still cold?’
‘No, it’s fine.’
‘She fascinated me … I wanted the world to stop turning, for the night to never end. I didn’t want to leave her. Not ever. I wanted to stay slumped in that armchair and listen to her recount her life until the end of time. I wanted the impossible. Without knowing it, I had set the tone of our relationship … time in suspension, unreal, impossible to hold on to, to retain. Impossible to savour, too. And then she got up. She had to be at work early in the morning. For Singh and Co. again. She really loved that old fox, but she had to get some sleep, because he was tough! I stood up at the same time. My heart failed me again. I was afraid of losing her. I mumbled something while she put on her jacket.
“Excuse me?”
“Imafrloosngou.”
“What did you say?”
“I said I’m afraid of losing you.”
‘She smiled. She said nothing. She smiled and swung lightly back and forth, holding on to the collar of her jacket. I kissed her. Her mouth was closed. I kissed her smile. She shook her head and gently gave me a little push.
‘I could have fallen over backwards.’
• • •
‘That’s all?’
‘Yes.’
‘You don’t want to tell me the rest, is that it? It gets X-rated?’
‘Not at all! Not at all, my dear … She left and I sat back down. I spent the rest of the night in a reverie, smoothing her little note on my thigh. Nothing very steamy, you see …’
‘Oh! Well, anyway … it was your thigh …’
‘My dear, how stupid you are.’
I giggled.
‘But why did she come back, then?’
‘That’s exactly what I asked myself that night, and the next day, and the day after and all the other days until I saw her again …’
‘When did you see her next?’
‘Two months later. She landed in my office one evening in the middle of August. I wasn’t expecting anyone. I had come back from holiday a little early to work while things were calm. The door opened and it was her. She had dropped by just like that. By chance. She had just been in Normandy, and was waiting for a friend to call to know when she would leave again. She looked me up in the telephone directory and there she was.
‘She brought back a pen I had left halfway around the world. She had forgotten to give it to me in the bar, but this time she remembered it at once and was digging around in her bag.
‘She hadn’t changed. I mean, I hadn’t idealised her, and I asked her:
‘But … you came just for that? Because of the pen?’
‘Yes, of course. It’s a beautiful pen. I thought you might be attached to it.’
‘She held it out to me, smiling. It was a Bic. A red Bic biro.
‘I didn’t know what to do. I … She took me in her arms and I was overcome. The world was all mine.’
‘We walked across Paris holding hands. Along the Seine, from the Trocadero all the way to the Ile de la Cité. It was a magnificent evening. It was hot, and the light was soft. The sun never seemed to set. We were like two tourists, carefree, filled with wonder, coats slung over our shoulders and fingers entwined. I played tour guide. I hadn’t walked like that in years. I rediscovered my city. We ate at the Place Dauphine and spent the following days in her hotel room. I remember the first evening. Her salty taste. She must have bathed right before taking the train. I got up in the night because I was thirsty. I … It was marvellous.
‘It was marvellous and completely false. Nothing was real. This wasn’t life. This wasn’t Paris. It was the month of August. I wasn’t a tourist. I wasn’t single. I was lying. I was lying to myself, to her, to my family. She wasn’t fooled, and when the party was over, when it was time for the telephone calls and the lies, she left.
‘At the boarding gate, she told me:
“I’m going to try to live without you. I hope I’ll find a way …”
‘I didn’t have the courage to kiss her.’
‘That evening, I ate at the Drugstore. I was suffering. I was suffering as if part of me was missing, as though someone had cut off an arm or a leg. It was an incredible sensation. I didn’t know what had happened to me. I remember that I drew two silhouettes on a paper napkin. The one on the left was her from the front, and the one on the right was her from the back. I tried to remember the exact location of her beauty marks, and when the waiter came over and saw all those little dots, he asked if I was an acupuncturist. I didn’t know what had happened to me, but I knew it was something serious! For several days, I had been myself. Nothing more or less than myself. When I was with her, I had the impression that I was a good guy … It was as simple as that. I didn’t know that I could be a good guy.
‘I loved this woman. I loved this Mathilde. I loved the sound of her voice, her spirit, her laugh, her take on the world, that sort of fatalism you see in people who have been everywhere. I loved her laugh, her curiosity, her discretion, her spinal column, her slightly bulging hips, her silences, her tenderness, and … all the rest. Everything … Everything. I prayed that she wouldn’t be able to live without me. I wasn’t thinking about the consequences of our encounter. I had just discovered that life was much more joyful when you were happy. It took me forty-two years to find it out, and I was so dazzled that I forced myself not to ruin everything by fixing my gaze on the horizon. I was on cloud nine.’
He refilled our glasses.
‘From that moment on, I became a workaholic. I spent most of my time in the office. I was the first to arrive and the last to leave. I worked on Saturdays, and couldn’t wait for Sundays to be over. I invented all kinds of pretexts. I finally landed the contract with Taiwan and was able to manoeuvre more freely. I took advantage of the situation to pile on extra projects, more or less sensible. And all of it, all of those insane days and hours were for one reason: because I hoped that she would call.
‘Somewhere on the planet there was a woman – perhaps around the corner, perhaps ten thousand kilometres away – and the only thing that mattered was that she would be able to reach me.
‘I was confident and full of energy. I think I was fairly happy at that time in my life because even if I wasn’t with her, I knew she existed. That was already incredible.
‘A few days before Christmas, I heard from her. She was coming to France and asked if I would be free for lunch the following week. We decided to meet in the same little wine bar. However, it was no longer summer, and when she reached for my hand, I swiftly drew it back. “Do they know you here?” she asked, hiding a smile.
‘I had hurt her. I was so unhappy. I gave her my hand back, but she didn’t take it. The sky darkened, and we still hadn’t found each other. I met her that same evening in another hotel room, and when I was finally able to run my fingers through her hair, I started to live again.
‘I … I loved making love with her.’
‘The following afternoon, we met in the same spot, and the day after that … Then it was the day before Christmas Eve, we were going to part. I wanted to ask her what her plans were, but I couldn’t seem to open my mouth. I was afraid – there was something in my gut that kept me from smiling at her.
‘She was sitting on the bed. I came close to her and laid my head on her thigh.
“What’s going to become of us?” she asked.
I didn’t say a word.
“Yesterday, when you left me here in this hotel room in the middle of the afternoon, I told myself that I would never go through this again. Never again, do you hear? Never … I got dressed, and I went out. I didn’t know where to go. I don’t want to do this again; I can’t lie down with you in a hotel room and then have you walk out the door afterwards. It’s too difficult.”
She had a hard time getting her words out.
“I promised myself that I would never go through this again with a man who would make me suffer. I don’t think I deserve it, do you un
derstand? I don’t deserve it. So that’s why I’m asking you: What’s going to become of us?”
I stayed silent.
“You have nothing to say? I thought so. What could you say, anyway? What could you possibly do? You have your wife and your kids. And me, what am I? I’m almost nothing in your life. I live so far away … so far away and so strangely … I don’t know how to live like other people. No house, no furniture, no cat, no cookbooks, no plans. I thought I was the smart one, that I understood life better than other people. I was proud of myself for not falling into the trap. And then you came along, and I feel completely at sea.
“And now I’d like to slow down a bit because I found out that life is wonderful with you. I told you I was going to try to live without you … I tried and I tried, but I’m not that strong; I think about you all the time. So I’m asking you now and maybe for the last time: What do you plan to do with me?”
“Love you.”
“What else?”
“I promise that I will never leave you behind in a hotel room ever again. I promise you.”
And then I turned and put my head back between her thighs. She lifted me up by the hair.
“And what else?”
“I love you. I’m only happy when I’m with you. I love only you. I … I … Trust me …”
‘She let go of my head and our conversation ended there. I took her tenderly, but she didn’t let herself go, she just let it happen. It’s not the same thing.’
‘What happened after that?’
‘After that we parted for the first time … I say “the first time” because we broke it off so many times … Then I called her … I begged her … I found an excuse to return to China. I saw her room, her landlady …
‘I stayed for a week. While she was at work I played plumber, electrician, and mason. I worked like a fiend for Miss Li, who spent her time singing and playing with her birds. She showed me the port of Hong Kong and took me to visit an old English lady who thought I was Lord Mountbatten! I played the part, if you can imagine!’
*
‘Can you understand what all this meant for me? For the little boy who had never dared to take the lift to the sixth floor? My entire life was spent between two arrondissements in Paris and a little country house. I never saw my parents happy, my only brother suffocated to death, and I married my first girlfriend, the sister of one of my friends, because I didn’t know how to pull out in time …
‘That was it. That was my life …
‘Can you understand? I felt as though I had been born a second time, as though it had all started again, in her arms, on that dubious harbour, in that damp little room of Miss Li …’
He stopped talking.
‘Was that Christine?’
‘No, it was before Christine … That one was a miscarriage.’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘No one knows. What is there to know? I got married to a young girl whom I loved, but in the way that you love a young girl. A pure, romantic love; the first rush of feelings … The wedding was a pretty sad affair. It felt like my first communion all over again.
‘Suzanne also hadn’t imagined that things would happen so quickly. She lost her youth and her illusions in one fell swoop. We both lost everything, while her father got the perfect son-in-law. I had just graduated from the top engineering school and he couldn’t imagine anything better, since his sons were studying … literature. He could barely pronounce the word. ‘Suzanne and I were not madly in love, but we were kind to each other. At that time, the one made up for the other.
‘I’m telling you all this, but I really don’t know if you can fully understand. Things have changed so much … It was forty years ago, but it seems like two centuries. It was a time when girls got married when they missed their periods. This must seem prehistoric to you …’
He rubbed his face.
‘So, where was I? Oh yes … I was saying that I found myself halfway around the world with a woman who earned her living jumping from one continent to another and who seemed to love me for who I was, for what was inside. A woman who loved me, I’m tempted to say … tenderly. All of this was very, very new. Very exotic. A marvellous woman who held her breath while watching me eat cobra soup with chrysanthemum flowers.’
‘Was it good?’
‘A bit gelatinous for my taste …’
He smiled.
‘And when I got back on the plane, for the first time in my life I was not afraid. I said to myself: let it explode, let it fall out of the sky and crash, it doesn’t matter.’
‘Why did you tell yourself that?’
‘Why?’
‘Yes, why? I would have said just the opposite … I’d tell myself: “Now I know why I’m afraid, and this goddamn plane better not fall!”’
‘Yes, you’re right. That would have been smarter … But there you are, and this is the heart of the problem: I didn’t say that. I was probably even hoping that it would crash … My life would have been so much simpler …’
‘You had just met the woman of your life and you thought about dying?’
‘I didn’t say I wanted to die!’
‘I didn’t say that either. I said you thought about dying …’
‘I probably think about dying every day, don’t you?’
‘No.’
• • •
‘Do you think your life is worth something?’
‘Uh … Yes … A little, anyway … And then there are the children …’
‘That’s a good reason.’
He had settled back down in the armchair and his face was once again hidden.
‘Yes. I agree with you, it was absurd. But I had just been so happy, so happy … I was intrigued and also a bit terrified. Was it normal to be so happy? Was it right? What price was I going to have to pay for all that?
‘Because … Was it because of my upbringing or what the priests told me? Was it in my character? I’m not always good at seeing things clearly, but one thing is sure: I’ve always compared myself to a workhorse. Bit, reins, blinkers, plough, yoke, cart, and furrow … the whole thing. Since I was a boy, I have walked in the street with my head down, staring at the ground as though it had a crust – hard earth to be broken up.
‘Marriage, family, work, the maze of social life, everything. I have always worked with lowered head and clamped jaw. Dreading everything. Mistrustful. I’m very good at squash, or I used to be, and it’s not by chance – I like the feeling of being shut up in a cramped room, whacking a ball as hard as possible so that it comes back at me like a cannonball. I really liked that.
‘ “You like squash and I like swingball, and that explains everything …,” Mathilde said one evening as she was massaging my aching shoulder. She was quiet for a moment, then added, “You should think about what I just said, it’s not that dumb. People who are rigid inside are always bumping into life and hurting themselves in the process, but people who are soft – no, not soft, supple is the word – yes, that’s it, supple on the inside, well, when they take a hit they suffer less … I think that you should take up swingball, it’s much more fun. You hit the ball and you don’t know where it’s going to come back, but you know it will come back because of the string, and it makes for a wonderful moment of suspense. But you see, for example, I sometimes think … that I’m your swingball …”
‘I didn’t react, and she kept rubbing me in silence.’
‘You never thought about starting your life over again with her?’
‘Of course I did. A thousand times.
‘A thousand times I wanted to and a thousand times I gave it up … I went right to the edge of the abyss, I leaned over, and then I fled. I felt accountable to Suzanne, to the children.
‘Accountable for what? There’s another difficult question … I was committed. I had signed, I had promised, I had to fulfil my obligations. Adrien was sixteen, and nothing was going right. He changed schools all the time, scribbled No Future in English in the lift, a
nd the only thing on his mind was to go to London and come back with a pet rat. Suzanne was distraught. Here was something stronger than her. Who had changed her little boy? For the first time, I watched her waver; she spent whole evenings without saying a word. I couldn’t see myself making the situation worse. I told myself … I told myself that …’
‘What did you tell yourself?’
‘Wait a moment, it’s so grotesque … I have to find the words I used at the time … I must have told myself something like: “I am an example for my children. Here they are, on the threshold of their adult lives, about to scale the wall, a time when they are thinking about making important decisions. What a horrendous example for them if I were to leave their mother now …” Rather lofty sentiments, don’t you think? “How will they face things afterwards? What sort of chaos would I be causing? What irreparable damage? I am not a perfect father, far from it, but I am still the most obvious role model for them, and the nearest, and therefore … hmmm … I must keep myself in check.”’
He grimaced.
‘Wasn’t that good? You have to admit it was priceless, no?’
I said nothing.
‘I was especially thinking of Adrien … of being a model of commitment for my son, Adrien … You have the right to snigger with me at that one, you know. Don’t hold back. It’s not often you get the chance to hear a good joke.’
I shook my head.
‘And yet … Oh, what’s the use? That was all so long ago … so very long ago …’
‘And yet what?’
‘Well … There was one moment when I came very close to the abyss … Really very near … I started looking around to buy a studio. I thought about taking Christine away for a weekend. I thought about what I would say; I rehearsed certain scenes in my car. I even made an appointment with my accountant, and then one morning – you see what a tease life can be – Françoise came into my office in tears …’
