With a pretty flick of her hand she pushes back a drooping lock of hair, she suddenly notices him and smiles: Thomas knows instantly that he is caught, and is happy to be. He feels an irresistible magnetic draw, one he takes pleasure in resisting. A pull that would be called attraction in physics too. He gathers the woman’s name is Louise, then she specifies: Louise Blum. She has fine features and is slim enough to emphasize her muscularity. What else to say about her, how to discern what he finds so erotic? The fleeting certainty, he will think later, that she smiled only at him? And he repeats it to himself: Louise Blum. He thinks how totally she suits her name.
As luck would have it, they end up sitting next to each other, but who believes in luck? She is still talking about organized crime and the role of defense lawyers, because there must be a defense, after all. He stays rather quiet, because he does not want to fill any gaps with his own words and also because he prefers listening to her. He likes her voice, the immediacy she injects into verbs. Then, when she shows an interest in him, he thinks he is telling her what he does but only says the word “analyst.” “Analyst?” she repeats, as if suspecting him of being an economist or a financier. He adds the psycho-. She behaves as if she is fascinated, perhaps she really is? Though she acts all anxious: “I often do slightly weird things. Like I talk to myself. Do you think I should have analysis?”
“Everyone should have analysis. It should be compulsory, like military service used to be.”
Thomas is only half joking. She nods.
“I know a place where everyone does, a whole nation of analyzed people: the East Village in New York. Never seen so many crazy people per square foot.”
Her laugh is deep in her throat, slightly hoarse, a laugh he instantly loves.
They play a social game: they look for things they have in common. And have no trouble finding some. He knows a psychiatrist friend of hers by reputation, she knows a lawyer he has done business with.
“He’s a complete asshole!” she says without a moment’s hesitation. It was not a slipup because she laughs as she adds, “He’s not a close friend of yours, is he?”
Thomas shakes his head, flustered, but then nods: true, he is a complete asshole. By digging deeper, they also find some journalists, a few artists …
“Pathetic,” smiles Louise.
“What?”
“How small the world is … No one ever just falls out of the sky.”
“I’m so sorry,” sighs Thomas.
His answer is formulaic but sorry he is, all the same. He would like to have fallen out of the sky. But they have found common ground, there is a familiarity between them—with her leading the way—that feels natural.
Very early on, in passing, she refers to a husband, children. From the twinge of disappointment these words produce, Thomas realizes how attracted he is to Louise. But he cannot draw any conclusions from the way she says them, certainly not that Louise is trying to convince him, or herself, that their meeting has no right to lead to anything. No, for the whole dinner, he leaves his experience as an analyst at the door. It is also true that, sometimes, women who say they have a husband and two children are just saying they have a husband and two children. Hey, he thinks at one point, Louise Blum could be Anna Stein’s blond twin. They are alike, they really are, even their lives are similar.
It is getting late, the evening is coming to an end, Louise hands out her e-mail address and telephone number. She has run out of business cards so she scribbles her details on the ends of napkins, which she tears off carefully. He folds the piece she hands to him and puts it in his pocket; on the way home he will check—twice—that he has not lost it, and as soon as he is home he will put the information on his computer and in his cell phone.
On this late summer’s morning, as he waits for Anna Stein, Thomas is writing this first e-mail to Louise Blum, so belatedly—he made a point of waiting a whole day—and so careful with respect to what he truly wants: “Thank you for such a nice evening, even though I wasn’t in great form. I hope I’ll see you again soon, at Sammy’s or somewhere else. Thomas (the analyst) XOXO.” Well, it’s hardly original, Thomas thinks. But if Louise replies despite his banal e-mail, that would at least prove she has some interest in him. He stretches in his chair, reaching his arms up and yawning loudly, a common gesture for the body to dispel the mind’s agitation. Click. Send. His Mac imitates a gust of wind and his nine o’clock appointment rings the buzzer. Anna Stein is ten minutes late.
ANNA AND YVES
• • •
ANNA STEIN’S OUTFIT IS DISTINCTIVE, as usual. Wide white pants that fit tightly over her buttocks to define them clearly, a fleetingly transparent, midnight blue blouse, and a shiny, black trench coat. She chooses her clothes carefully, her long tall figure allowing her to wear things that would be fatal on others. She sees herself as slim, lives being slim as synonymous with being rigorous. Gaining weight, she is convinced, is always a lapse.
Anna Stein sits down and apologizes for being late: her little girl, Lea, has a fever and there was nowhere to park. She gets comfortable on the couch and goes straight back to the meeting she mentioned the day before yesterday. She repeats the words she used then—he is a writer—and reveals his name, Yves. Thomas erases the X in his diagram from before, replaces it with a Y, and draws a second oval around the A to include her and her husband, Stanislas. Finally, he draws a third one, still including Anna Stein, but to which he adds his own name, Thomas. Anna Stein is now at the intersection of three rings, and no longer seems to belong to any of them.
Yves is “the same age as Stan,” her husband, “or not much older.” She thinks he is “pretty broke” and “besides, he lives in Belleville.” Writing has always been a fantasy for Anna Stein; she suspects Yves may be its embodiment. She has had no appetite for a week. “I don’t eat anything anymore, I’ve already lost five pounds, at least.” It seems to frighten her. “I don’t know what’s happening to me.” The evening of the very day they met, almost before she got through the door at home, she thinks she admitted everything to Stan. All she said, speaking casually as if discussing some pleasant surprise, was that she had met a man at a reception, “a man she found unsettling,” “for the first time in a long time.” Stan could find nothing to say in response and almost immediately talked about something else, Lea’s music theory lesson, how well she was getting on, an appointment Anna’s brother had made for a vision problem. Anna Stein would have liked her husband to react or, better, for him to act, for him to know instinctively that she was only saying it so he would hold her back. But Stanislas did not grasp, or did not want to grasp, the weight of her words. He allowed a window to be opened to her desires, and it makes her furious, disappointed, and delighted all at once.
Yves gave her his latest book, with the unusual title The Two-Leaf Clover, and wrote the most anodyne of dedications in it. The book, which is very short, relates with ferocious intensity an emotional disaster, a restrained and clinical dissection of a lover’s fantasy: a story as old as time itself about an older man who, having become infatuated with a young woman and having seduced her a bit, but not enough, decides to go and join her in Ireland—which explains the title—where he collides head-on with her withering indifference in the most magnificent fiasco. The irony with which it is told made her laugh, and she thought: this man’s an expert. She also found it reassuring that she liked his style, his lightness of touch. She is an attentive reader, critical and perceptive, she would have hated him to disappoint her, for him to write like someone who churned out novels, but she was probably in no state to be disappointed. She liked the fact that he could talk about love like that. But something in the way she says “talk about love” this morning makes it sound like an actual character. Thomas writes a note.
Because Thomas is paying close attention, meticulous attention even, it is one of those morning sessions when he will hardly say anything, when he will only ask Anna Stein to repeat a few sentences so that she realizes later
that those were the exact sentences she spoke. He jots them down, classifies them, organizes them. If she were to forget them, he would make a point of sending them back to her, like a good baseline player on the tennis court. Years of experience have convinced him of the key role language plays, but he is wary of interpreting things too literally.
Thomas is interested in Yves: surely he himself is this older man who becomes infatuated with a younger woman? Maybe he will read one of his books, why not the very one that seduced Anna Stein? An attentive reader will always learn more, and more quickly, from good authors than from life. Perhaps because there is a strong analogy between psychoanalysis and writing. Like the analyst, the writer wants to be heard, recognized, and is afraid of being swallowed up in thought and words. Most likely Thomas also sees Yves as his own double. Perhaps Anna Stein is aware of this possible reading, of this turning point in her analysis. He is suddenly worried that his own situation might insinuate itself between them. In all the momentum drawing him toward Louise Blum, Anna Stein’s words have particular resonance. He must be sure to keep his distance.
THOMAS AND LOUISE
• • •
THE SESSION ENDS when the screen of his Mac flashes discreetly. The name and surname appear in dark blue: Louise Blum. She has replied, already. Thomas feels his breathing quicken, finds this irritating. He sees Anna to the door, says goodbye with measured poise, better than that, slow-motion poise. He watches her walk away, thinks her buttocks really are pleasingly defined. To the individual in treatment, the psychoanalyst may never be completely a person, but then Thomas has always had trouble seeing Anna Stein as an invisible woman.
Then he closes the door and goes back to the computer. His feigned composure is in proportion to his impatience. He waits a few moments, as if delaying reading the e-mail could influence its contents. He is annoyed with himself for this relic of magical thinking, but has long been resigned to the fact that he will never shake it off altogether. He clicks at last. The message is warm, very, and yet does not quite satisfy his hopes. Louise mentions the “very friendly” party and envisions having dinner “really soon” with their mutual friends. Thomas is suddenly afraid he misread her, that she will introduce him to her husband and children, that he will be relegated to the status of a friend or, worse, a friend of theirs. He replies, politely, cautiously, saying he would be delighted to see her again, but for lunch instead, perhaps. Lunch always keeps partners out of the equation. He hopes she gets it. Her answer comes back almost immediately: “Lunch, yes. I’m free tomorrow. Otherwise, not till next week,” the message says. Thomas smiles, writes “Where tomorrow?” He clicks. Gust of wind. Barely a minute and the reply comes: “Tomorrow, 1 pm, Café Zimmer at Châtelet.”
Then he risks one last e-mail.
“Okay for tomorrow. Do you know, I watched Truffaut’s Stolen Kisses again yesterday. I’d forgotten the last scene: Claude Jade and Jean-Pierre Léaud are having breakfast after a night spent in each other’s arms. They’re buttering toast and drinking coffee. He asks for a notebook and a pencil, she gives them to him: he writes a couple of words, tears the page out, folds it and hands it to her. She reads it, takes the notebook, writes something herself, tears the page out like him, folds it and hands it to him. They exchange five or six pages like this, no more, and the audience has no idea what they say. Léaud suddenly takes a bottle opener from the drawer in the table and slips the girl’s finger into the circle you fit over the bottle top, as if putting a ring on her. It’s one of the loveliest marriage proposals on film. Do you remember that scene? Don’t you think it anticipates the miracle of e-mail?”
Gust of wind. The dormant shy guy within him rapidly regrets what he has done. A few minutes later, Louise’s reply arrives: “Yes, I do remember that scene from Truffaut. But no relationship with me, I’m already married.”
No relationship with me, I’m already married … Thomas rereads the sentence, intrigued. All at once the double meaning jumps out at him. The psychoanalyst laughs out loud.
LOUISE
• • •
JACQUES CHIRAC HAS JUST TAKEN OVER from François Mitterrand as president of France, the UN Security Council has adopted Resolution 986, known as “Oil for Food,” on Iraq, and Louise Blum, attorney at law, has turned twenty-five. A tall young woman who is afraid of nothing and certainly not of having to defend in front of her peers the case which goes by the absurd title “So What’s with the Concierge, Why Is She on the Stairs?”
The Berryer Conference is a test of eloquence set up by the Paris bar. In front of a caricature of a chairman and guest of honor (a writer on this occasion), and confronted with implacably fierce examiners, young lawyers have to come up with something injected with humor and virtuosity. It is a feat of mental agility. Places in the competition are highly sought after and only a rare few are selected: Louise is one of them. She was given her subject—by drawing lots—half an hour earlier; she quickly devised a plan, traced her own logic, made a note of some expressions to slip into her improvisation. The twelve examiners are only too ready to call her out, she has to make it hard for them: Louise wants to conclude on a more serious note (which is traditional), by evoking the vast tower block that is life itself. Because the guest is a writer by profession, she will quote from Georges Perec; mention the tower block in Life: A User’s Manual; construct an elegant parallel between the stairs, which link the various floors, and law, a house that all men share; establish the connection between domestic and civic order, between the concierge who is the caretaker of a building and the caretaker of the nation’s laws.
But first she must get them to laugh. She knows how to do it.
“Mr. Chairman, members of the jury, I know it’s something of a national pastime joking about concierges, how surly, lazy, and pathologically inquisitive they are, but I don’t want to fall down the elevator shaft of cheap humor at their expense, I mean my father, mother, and sister are in the room. I’m afraid so, Mr. Chairman, as the concierge—her again—would say, I’m still tied to my mother’s apron strings. No, I’ll be caretaker of my jokes or this concierge will be putting me out with the trash and so will you. What’s her name, anyway, Janet or something?”
She makes use of bad puns and a succession of verbal pirouettes, the audience applauds, they drum their feet and whistle. Louise’s friends nudge each other: she is off to a good start, at the top of her game.
And she is. Louise holds out like this for a good three minutes. To change tack and win a bit of time, she gives a dramatic flourish of her arms and repeats the question: “Yes, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, what is with the concierge, why is she on the stairs?”
Then she stops. The tightly calibrated time of the Berryer is punctuated by a pause. The silence lengthens, her friends look at her, start to feel anxious. She has only a few minutes left.
Louise seems to be somewhere else. Her cheeks have gone pale, her blue eyes drained of life. Something is happening, the silence digs even deeper, an uncomfortable feeling settles in the room, this is not a show anymore.
“Yes, of course I know why she is on the stairs.”
Her voice has changed, shrugged off any affectation. Louise does not consult her notes, the verve of a defense speech has given way to pure tension. Louise is breathing more quickly, no longer aware of the room:
… It is 1942. The concierge is on the stairs and there are two police officers in kepis climbing up behind her
because she’s on the stairs, the little sign hanging from the door handle of her room says that the concierge is on the stairs
and they say, Hello ma’am, please could you tell us which floor the Blums live on? Blum as in Leon Blum
and she says, the concierge says, Fourth floor on the left, the Blums live on the left on the fourth floor
yes, that’s what the concierge tells them, of course
and it’s true that they live on the fourth floor, these Blums
when you’re a concierge you answer if a po
lice officer asks you a question, you don’t resist
so, sure enough, the police officers ring at the Blums’ door
Blum, as everybody knows, is a German word, it means flower
flower as in the Marlene Dietrich song “Sag mir, wo die Blumen sind,” where have all the flowers gone?
and that’s just what the officers do with the Blums, they pick them like flowers
Good morning, ma’am, good morning, sir
French police
You need to come with us
Yes, it’s very early but you’d better bring your stuff, we don’t know, this could take a while
so the Blums get ready
Hurry please
and the Blums go down the stairs, all four floors with the children
the children
Sarah is seven, Georges ten
Come on, kids, we’re going on a journey, don’t worry, hey, Georges, you could help your mother with her suitcase, it’s too heavy
and hey presto we’re on the bus
bus S. It could be S for summer or seaside or sandcastle, but not this time because this one is really bus SS, isn’t it
Enough About Love Page 2
