Voice Over

by Celine Curiol

  Saturday night. A student she met the week before has invited her to a cabaret night in a dance studio near Bastille. Quite a few people are already there when she arrives. Armchairs and folding chairs ring a vacant space intended to serve as the stage. She threads her way to the bar at the back of the room and orders a vodka tonic, which she drinks in small sips, perched on a high stool. The mixture is too strong. People press up against the counter then leave again with several glasses, which they hand round to the others in their party. She is the only person seated at the bar; no sign of her host who has apparently failed to show up. The women, in skimpy low-cut tops, keep bursting into laughter as they drag on their cigarettes at regular intervals. The men make an effort to keep them laughing, even as they check out the new arrivals. A few glances flutter around her, but no one makes up his mind to come over and talk.

  A figure in long black wig, dark glasses and fake fur coat has just entered the studio and is advancing in her direction. With a languorous gait, the transvestite pushes his way through the crowd, making for the bar. He slips off his coat. A slim, androgynous body. Fascinated, she tries to distinguish what is male from what is female. She attempts to make out the eyes behind the dark glasses and locks of hair. Sensing her gaze, he turns his head. His voice is husky, his eyes still invisible; he has the smile of a woman, teasing, affectionate. He’s a singer, he’s appearing in the show. His name is Renée Risqué. This brief introduction over, he stops talking and from behind his tinted lenses appears to size her up. I have a proposition for you. He needs a woman to come on at the start of his act and hurl herself at him, screaming the words, You promised me. It will make for a great opening, he reckons, and lead him straight into his first song. She shakes her head emphatically, laughing. I’m too shy. He calls over the barman, has their drinks refilled. How about after that one? And he takes off his glasses. His eyes are very pale, made-up. He reminds her of someone, but of someone she has never met. You’ll have to pretend to be incredibly jealous, almost hysterical, that’s important, you understand? His will be the third act; she’ll have to come on a few seconds after him, then do exactly as he has just explained. Is that a yes? Yes. Renée leaves her to go off and get ready.

  The lights have been dimmed; a powerful projector illuminates the stage. A man has stepped up to the mike and announced the names of the artists about to perform. As the first sketch gets underway, she finds herself unable to follow. Her stomach churning, she plays with her glass, picturing herself on stage: taking her first steps into the spotlight to confront a drag artist, a practiced exhibitionist, now playing opposite a poor girl paralysed with fear, who has to blurt out a line as trite as “you promised me” and sound convincing. Why on earth had she felt obliged to accept? In her own life she can’t recall ever having said you promised me. If the staging were up to her, she would say the words in a tone that was flat, calm; saddened yet bitter too. But certainly not screaming. However, her fake anger would guarantee the comic effect; the audience would laugh not thanks to her, but as a result of the contrast between her screaming and Renée’s calm composure. A man in drag and a woman having a lovers’ quarrel—that was rather ludicrous to begin with. If her voice broke with stage fright, she would make do with gestures. Act number two. Two girls in pink tutus, their mouths gleaming red, hail each other in an elaborate series of acrobatic mini-routines. She tries to put “you promised me” out of her mind, along with all the various ways to say it . . . Renée. That’s not his real name. And once she gets off stage, then what? Can you even envisage an affair that begins with the words “You promised me,” yelled out in front of a hundred-strong crowd, in a tango studio at the back of a shabby courtyard, to a man dressed in women’s clothes? Her drink is too strong; the music, omnipresent. In such an atmosphere audacities of every kind seem permissible, even believing that you’re in love. Applause. The two ballet dancers have finished their act. She gets down from the bar stool and walks mechanically towards the stage. No one in the assembled gathering guesses that she is the jealous, rash and pathetic woman who comes to have it out with the performer. She stations herself at the edge of the stage to await the arrival of Renée Risqué.

  The words burst out, violent. Her field of vision shrinks, and for about twenty seconds all she sees is Renée’s mouth, tensed, his eyes wide in feigned surprise. Then she hears the laughter, the first chords from the guitar, the song starting up. A man pulls her back and makes her sit down in the front row. You can let go of me now, she tells him, her fists still clenched. Around her people are staring, intrigued. Impossible to remain among all these admiring and sorry looks. She feels emptied, as though she had lived what has just happened. She goes back to the bar and orders another vodka tonic. The voice of Renée, puppet without strings under the colored spotlights, is everywhere now. She imagines his body naked, from his made-up face down, his cock thrusting forward as though in painful negation of the black on the rims of his eyes. He is wooing the audience, male and female alike. Inventing for them a cavalier, sarcastic character, an all-round charmer, one able to look into the void without ever falling in. Enthralled, the audience begs for more, but the prince-tightrope walker reveals himself immune to flattery and makes a dignified exit. He comes back into the room just as the last act before the interval is beginning. Hands reach out to him as he goes by, he is congratulated, he responds with strained smiles. She forces herself not to look in his direction. They could just as well leave it at that, especially since he doesn’t seem the sort to say thank you. But he comes over, just as she had hoped. After kissing her on the cheek, he orders two more drinks under the insistent stare of the barman whose excessive courtesy she fears he will find seductive. They clink glasses. Sitting up on her stool she casts a sidelong glance at Renée and catches him eyeing her breasts. Why me? He smiles. Because I wasn’t expecting you, darling. The last word stings, and in spite of the perfunctory way it was said, she can’t help reading it as a sign of affection. Do you want to go back with me? With the mannerisms of an actor in a third-rate action film, he has pulled off his glasses. All she can see are his clear pale eyes, far more human than the rest of him; childlike, expectant, too gentle to remain exposed. Her silence becomes consent. Renée replaces his glasses, downs the contents of his drink, and takes her by the hand. She grabs her things, catching the barman’s look of disappointment on her way out. Whether the hand in hers is that of a girlfriend or a potential lover, she is no longer sure. What they will do at his place, she has no idea; anyway, his place was not the term he had used.

  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. Whe
n 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.