Voice Over

by Celine Curiol

  The next day, in the middle of the afternoon, she is outside the entrance to Parc Monceau. She spent all morning thinking about the actress, about Maxime, about their break, about the remark of hers that led to it. She feels as if she has rescued the actress, and since the previous day a sensation of lightness hasn’t left her. Hence the desire for green open spaces. She has chosen Parc Monceau because she has never been there before. Entering the park, she reflects how one person can change the life of another, without meaning to, by a sentence or a gesture. A gesture or a sentence that someone else could repeat dozens of times without having any effect. Without ever realizing it, a person can change another’s life. Couples are lounging on the grass and children are rough-housing with their parents. Lone men and women are reading or getting bored on the benches. Whenever she is in a park, she is always faced with the same dilemma. All those orderly paths overwhelm her. A park should be explored instinctively, without markers. But the walkways impose their fixed itineraries and lead to artificial crossings, which force one to choose different sections of the park over others. The only way to get to know the place is to follow the layout of paths, to explore them all without exception. At each fork, however, one of the paths has to be abandoned and might never be found again.

  Near the pond, she notices a man sitting with his back against the trunk of a willow tree. His legs are stretched out in front of him and he uses them to support the notebook he is writing in. Through sheer concentration, he keeps the world at a distance. Further along, she sits down by the water’s edge but continues to spy on him. He doesn’t look up; he is galloping forward without moving a muscle. She imagines herself doing the same thing: emptying her head onto one page after another. But what would she write about? Her days at the offices of the SNCF! The man has lifted his head and is looking out at the surface of the water. She has never met a writer before. Do you write? For a moment she thinks she is hearing her own thoughts. But then she spots a pair of black feet in sandals just beside her. He is there every day, a man’s voice announces from on high. The new arrival has settled onto the grass twelve inches away from her. She tells herself that maybe she knows him, but no, she has never seen his face before. No doubt, she is not the sort of woman who needs to be asked permission. She should perhaps stand up, tell him that she’s taken, married, but she can’t bring herself to lie. The man has turned his attention to the surface of the water, perhaps looking for inspiration as well. Do you write? She shrugs her shoulders. At least he’s someone who tries to be funny. She can pass herself off as a prostitute, but not as a writer, an authoress, she isn’t sure what term she should use. You could be. Well, he must take her for an idiot, unless it’s the best compliment he can come up with. Actually no, she couldn’t be. And so what does she do, apart from spying on poets? The question takes her by surprise. She doesn’t spy on poets. She doesn’t know any. In fact, he’s the first one . . . she’s seen . . . in her life probably . . . she’s never come here before. He was joking. She at once wishes she could take back her dumb reply. It must be some deep-rooted need of hers to justify herself to strangers. Especially since he doesn’t even seem to be trying to pick her up. His name is Atoki, and he insists on knowing what she does for a living. She hasn’t the faintest idea why he’s so curious. She thinks of a whole list of professions: accordion player, tiger tamer, Sunday-school teacher, champion jockey, chimney sweep, striptease artist, lunar astronaut. She has no end of choices to become something she is not for him. Tell me the truth. This Atoki person is really starting to get on her nerves. She’s an SNCF train announcer, there, that’s all. Happy now? Atoki stares at her as if he hasn’t understood. He wants to know what SNCF stands for. She may be naïve, but either this guy is pulling her leg or he was born on another planet. SNCF, the railway company. Atoki seems impressed: he has never met anyone with that profession before. It sounds like a good job to him. You’re not from around here? Atoki is a refugee, he was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo. His words sound like the opening lines of an advert for an NGO or an adoption agency. She doesn’t know where the Democratic Republic of Congo is in Africa; she prefers not to ask. Which is just as well because Atoki seems none too keen to talk about his native country. He wants to ask questions. He tells her that it must be quite something to talk into a microphone and address hundreds of people at the same time. Actually, once you get used to it . . . He wants to know if she ever feels like saying the first thing that comes into her head. Changing a departure time or the number of a platform, for example. If you want to get fired, that’s a good way of going about it. Of course the idea has some appeal, but she has never thought about it. Over time, certain prohibitions have the power to merge into what is normal and violating them becomes inconceivable. It’s hardly in her interest, in any case, to defy the unwritten rules of what is pompously referred to as professional behavior. Atoki’s full attention is on her; she tries to understand the reasons for this blatant interest. A foreigner, slightly disoriented, tries to fit in, to form ties, to understand through its inhabitants the place where he has been assigned to live. Because he will probably spend the rest of his days there. The distance this man has travelled to end up sitting next to her in Parc Monceau in Paris must be the equivalent of five years of métro rides for her. She has never been to another country, not even Switzerland or Belgium. She has never been a refugee or a foreigner. And yet she thinks she can guess: no points of reference, a permanent sense of incomprehension, of rejection, of being stigmatized. And so foreigners of all sorts find themselves in parks because all parks are similar. Parks don’t reflect the tastes of a society as much as buildings do; in a park an immigrant can feel a little at home. Atoki is still not satisfied. He now wants to know what aspect of her work has astonished her the most. She makes a face. Atoki waits, as if unaware of the incongruity of his question. It feels as if she is taking part in a television quiz. What kind of thing? Anything. She is about to say, nothing, that her work is monotonous, that she sits down behind a microphone every day to read out stoically whatever she is asked to read, that the words are always the same, that the trains are rarely ever late, that everything is timed down to the last minute, that unforeseen events are kept to a minimum, that she produces nothing, invents nothing, that the only people she has contact with are her colleagues, who avoid her and whom she avoids, that many travellers are convinced that what they are hearing is a synthetic voice and not a real person. If she were born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, then yes, there would be astonishing things to relate, but in her case, honestly. Poor refugee. To have travelled all those miles and to stumble across her, who can’t even come up with a single original anecdote to tell him. Oh but actually, there is something. Atoki waits with baited breath. Recently she met a strange man in a café who was pretending to be a tramp. Although she had never seen him before, the tramp knew her. The tramp had never taken a train but he slept in the station and heard her announcing the departures and arrivals. And it was from her voice that he recognized her.

  The poet is no longer under the tree, and Atoki has fallen silent. He observes her for several seconds, then lowers his eyes. Whether he is lost in thought or embarrassed, she can’t tell from his expression. She doesn’t tell stories usually, but the words came, lured out of her by Atoki’s interest. That’s an odd story. Atoki’s face looks serious. Perhaps she has shocked him. Or he must have remembered something painful. In his case, the word refugee says a lot. She imagines a war—young black men armed with Kalashnikovs astride military trucks, a famine—a skeletal child in the stick-thin arms of its young mother. What I don’t understand is why there are people sleeping in train stations in a country as rich as yours. Atoki addresses her as if, as a French woman, she were personally responsible for this state of affairs. Yes well, it’s not very logical, but she doesn’t see how it will change. She has always seen people sleeping outdoors in Paris. There are many explanations for homelessness, but no one has ever managed to eliminate it
. Atoki has gone back to contemplating the surface of the water, its crests now taking on a reddish tint. She doesn’t reply. She doesn’t like talking about that kind of thing, it never leads anywhere. She has no opinion on the matter, any more than she has a solution to the problem. On her SNCF salary, she isn’t the person who is going to improve the lot of the poor. And yet she can’t help feeling guilty. In the métro, after finding the homeless man dead, she had run off. She could tell Atoki about that incident as well, only she fears it will make him even less talkative. He would take her for a coward, he who must have witnessed horrors in his own country. She has pins and needles in her legs. Time for her to be off. Atoki turns his head as if he had forgotten that she was there. What is the name of the station where you work? The gare du Nord. He is only asking because, who knows, if he ever finds himself without a place to sleep, he’ll go in and listen to her. A smile, a handshake. Following one of the walkways, she heads straight back to the exit of the park.

  At the third stop, two teenage girls have entered the carriage and sit down opposite her. They don’t say a word and look so different that she wonders if they are together or not. The one on the right seems unable to cope with what has happened to her body, whose proportions have changed without her having any say in the matter. The girl on the left looks like one of those young models who appear in women’s magazines. Her hair is long, straight and layered. Shiny lips and eye-shadow. A real Barbie, with headphones on her ears and a CD-walkman in her hand, ignoring everyone and yet attracting the stares of the male passengers around her. The news report about young American girls comes to mind. Has this adolescent ever had a man’s penis in her mouth? She wonders if the girl is aware of the sexual attraction she incites. It isn’t because of her make-up or haughty expression—it’s her fragility, which is so badly concealed. And she realizes that at the same age, when she felt apart from the world of adults, she too must have been this walking temptation. There’s a bed with a spring mattress and a piano. Before her is the pink room. She screws her eyes shut to erase the image, then opens them again. It doesn’t help. The enormous, polished-wood wardrobe by the front door, the shelves stacked with perfect piles of dishcloths, towels, packets of lavender in the folds, the bed with the spring mattress, the metal bedposts she would grip as she invented storms that billowed up the ocean of carpet, the bed, the golden spheres at the end of the bedposts which became crystal balls whenever she played at being a fortune-teller, the night table with its marble top, the lampshade with the tassels she used to braid when she was bored. She sees herself in that room at thirteen, sitting on the wicker chair practising Mozart’s First Piano Sonata. She still knows the notes by heart, the rhythm and the melody, the look of the score on which stave, minims, crotchets, quavers, dots and bar lines made up a code she was proud to be able to decipher. And suddenly, it is no longer herself that she sees playing, but the teenage girl opposite her, sitting in her chair at the keyboard. She finds her so charming, so vulnerable, and all the more desirable for being unaware of her seductive power. It dawns on her that this was how she was seen even as she thought she was someone else. At the time, she didn’t know. A cruel injustice, a trap of ignorance. She has clenched her hands, and she notices that her nails have left small white-rimmed indentations on her skin.

  The second teenager has let out a sigh. She is wearing jeans and a huge anorak. Her thick thighs stretch the material of her trousers and the anorak hangs loosely about her torso. Her hair is tied back with an elastic band. Her prescription glasses have slipped down her nose. Her entire body, right down to her pupils, is motionless. Except for her thumbs, which are frenetically working the buttons of a miniature electronic game. She hasn’t the slightest idea what is flitting across the girl’s screen, but she thinks she knows what the teenager is using it to escape from.

  No message. She counts two and a half days. A reasonable amount of time. She doesn’t allow herself to doubt. Perhaps Ange has gagged him and locked him in a closet. Or he hasn’t had a chance to free himself for the meeting he will be arranging with her. She’s dying to call him. In fact, imagining it has become a daily mental exercise: picking up the handset, hearing the dial tone, dialing the number; the rings, the click, Ange’s hello, hanging up at once. The chances that he will pick up the phone are too slim. And besides, he said, I’ll call you, not, call me. She’ll have to be patient, that’s all there is to it. Having made up her mind, she prepares herself a quick dish of pasta shells with grated Gruyère cheese and settles down with her meal in front of the television. A man in a suit and tie is being interviewed as part of a televised debate. His name is given at the bottom of the screen: Yves Métayer, Terrorism Expert and Professor at the Institute of Political Science. The man earnestly explains that we have to stop deluding ourselves, that in five or ten years we will witness an actual Third World War. Not a conflict between nation states but a full-blown religious war, Christians against Muslims! The journalist smiles into the camera. Aren’t you being a bit too pessimistic? That’s precisely the kind of blinkered judgement that will make this war impossible to contain, replies the professor, growing increasingly agitated. This conflict will be extremely bloody, you’ll see. The journalist thanks Yves Métayer and announces a commercial break. The pasta shells have slipped from her fork; she is left open-mouthed. She doesn’t watch the news very often, she hadn’t known there was already talk of a Third World War. She doesn’t really believe it, but if it were actually to come about, where would she be in five years’ time? Here. The first target in a war is always the capital. Would she leave? She swallows a few more mouthfuls of pasta, and when she’s finished, her mind is made up: she’ll stay.

  Walking through the station to her office, she thinks about going somewhere. With him, for the first time. She had stayed because of him and will only go away because of him. It’s no longer just a vague idea as it was in the past of wanting to leave without having the will to do so. To her surprise, she finds herself imagining the various steps necessary to organize such a trip. They would choose a place. They could talk for hours about it without growing bored, reeling off the names of unknown cities and countries until they found the right one. She’d take care of the tickets. She wouldn’t buy them at a ticket window, but from one of those automatic dispensers that remind her of the casino slot machines she has always dreamt of using. She would choose the time of departure, very early in the morning, at an hour when Paris was still rousing itself from sleep. Out of bed, and straight to the station, nothing to interfere with the anticipation of departure. Time of return, late evening, so as to arrive in the dark, coming back to a city already half asleep, to seek refuge at home, with memories of the trip as bed companions. She would take the seat by the window; first she would ask him what he wanted. She would check the information printed on the thick paper and carefully put the tickets away unfolded. They would arrange to meet at the far end of the platform. She would be carrying an overnight bag with two or three changes of clothes. Toothbrush, toothpaste, hairbrush, the minimum. Hand in hand, they would walk the length of the purring train until they reached their carriage. Their carriage. They would sit down. She would inspect everything: the materials of the seats, the luggage racks, the windows. She would take a good deep breath of compartment air. And inside that train, with him by her side, she would feel safe, ready to circumnavigate the globe without ever stopping. He called her on Wednesday at 6:27 pm. She had just glanced at the kitchen clock. He arranged to meet her the next day at 6.30, in front of city hall. Ange had a dance class. For the next twenty-four hours, she accomplished everything she did with incredible ease. The thought of getting together is a kind of balancing pole. Her body feels the effects: she holds herself straighter, is no longer tired. It’s as if she has been chosen. She is no longer adapting herself to life. Life suddenly seems to be adapting itself to her.

  She doesn’t sit down on the stone benches for fear that he might not see her. She adjusts her hair and tries to act as na
turally as she can. Her head jerks round intermittently, as though she keeps feeling that he is watching her, as though he were continually stepping out from some unsuspected corner. She would like to see him so she could pretend not to have seen him. For a moment, she is distracted by the tumultuous stream of pedestrians on the square, wind-up figurines marching in a precise direction, but whose straight-line trajectories seem random. A collision has just been narrowly avoided; barely glancing up, the man and woman continue on their way. The sound of their footsteps is lost amid the din of engines and car horns. A voice rises above the commotion. He is there, behind her, scarcely a metre away. She walks over the moment she recognizes him; she doesn’t dare look him in the eyes. She sees the sides of his jacket flutter. He has just left work. She doesn’t move, leaving him to take the initiative. She feels the coolness of his lips on both her cheeks. He suggests they go for a walk.

  Until the Île Saint-Louis, not a word is spoken. She’d like to take advantage of this silence but can’t. Everything is mixed up in her. She thinks she has to talk. To justify their unusual presence in this place, at this hour of the day, the fact that they are together for the first time. To prove to him that he wasn’t wrong to invite her. To keep him there, give him reasons to stay. Because she is worried that he could change his mind at any second and walk off having realized his mistake. She has never been very talkative, but right now her whole brain is refusing to cooperate. It feels as if she is playing Scrabble with herself. Bits of words, the beginnings of phrases form in her head, but she can’t manage to string them together. Her only consolation is to think that perhaps a similar pandemonium is whirling inside him. She doesn’t dare look at him to check. And then, as they turn a street corner, he places a hand on her back. A brief caress, as if to reassure her, as if he had sensed her panic. The contact calms her fears. She knows only one thing now: she is walking by his side.