They always met up, trembling, in that same small room, and sank swiftly into the darkness, with hardly any time at all for words. They knew nothing about each other, but their bodies meshed with such fervor, such piety, such a rush of power, that the intensity of their union would totally derail their memories; each time, after saying good-bye, they both would once again seek some tangible recollection, at least one word that had been whispered in the darkness, some gesture, but always in vain. Whenever they separated, they were like sleepwalkers, lost and disoriented, and only after a couple of hours had passed would they start once more to look forward to their next meeting, the sole source of meaning in their lives, the sole reality they knew. All else for them was dead. It was only through such anticipation that they had any awareness of the time, the weather, or other people, since their impatience turned all these things into obstacles.
Thus Lucile, before going off to her rendezvous with Antoine, would check her purse six times for her car keys, would mentally rehearse the route to his apartment ten times, would cast a dozen glances at the very alarm clock that for all her life she’d looked at with nothing but immense disdain. And Antoine would tell his secretary ten times that he had an important meeting at four o’clock, and each time he would leave the office at quarter of four, even though it took him just two short minutes to walk home from work. And every time they arrived, they were both a little pale — she because she’d thought she’d never escape from a horrible traffic jam, and he because he’d gotten tied up with one of the authors in their stable, who simply would not stop talking. They would embrace with a deep sigh, as if they had barely managed to escape some dire fate, when in fact that dire fate would, in the worst possible case, have been a delay of five minutes.
They said “Je t’aime” to each other at the height of passion, but never at any other time. Sometimes while Lucile, eyes closed, was regaining her breath, Antoine would bend down and caress her face and shoulder with his hand, tenderly murmuring, “You make me so happy, you know.” And she would smile. He spoke to her about her smile, telling her how much it drove him crazy whenever, wide-eyed, she would flash it at someone else.
“Your smile is just too helpless-looking,” he said. “It’s upsetting to me.”
“But usually my mind is on something else — smiling is just my way of being friendly. I don’t look helpless, I just look dumb.”
“God only knows what you’re thinking about,” he countered. “But at parties, you always seem like you’re pondering some deep secret or reliving some stroke of bad luck.”
“Actually, yes, there is a certain secret I have in mind…” she replied, pulling his head down to her shoulder and whispering, “Don’t think so much, Antoine — let’s just be happy together.”
And then he would go quiet, not daring to tell her what was constantly eating at him, what was keeping him awake night after night in bed next to Diane, who also was having rough nights and who would pretend to be asleep. “It can’t go on this way, can’t go on this way… Why isn’t she the one by my side?”
Lucile’s devil-may-care way of being, her ability to shut her eyes to any problem in life, made him uneasy. She refused to speak of Charles, refused to make any plan of any sort. Maybe she was involved with Blassans-Lignières in order to gain something? But she seemed so free, she would so instinctively drop out of any conversation the instant it turned to money (and of course no one talks about money more than people who have too much of it…) that he couldn’t imagine her ever deliberately trying to get something out of someone. She would say, “I always take the path of least resistance” or “I hate possessiveness” or “I missed you” — and he simply couldn’t put all these things together in his head. He had an uneasy presentiment that something would happen, that they would be discovered, that fate would soon replace him with another lover, and he despised himself for such thoughts.
Antoine knew that he was easy-going — sensual but moral. He’d certainly never had as deep a feeling for any woman as he did for Lucile, but he had nonetheless had quite a few liaisons, and out of a feeling of guilt, he had come to see his affair with Sarah — which, in truth, had just been a bagatelle — as a tragic love story. He knew he was extremely prone to inner conflict. In fact, he was nearly as talented at being unhappy as at being happy, and Lucile threw him for a loop. He found it baffling that she had only had one prior love affair, ten years earlier, that for her it was water long since under the bridge, and that she looked upon this new love affair as a marvelous, unpredictable, unexpected, fragile gift, whose future course she did her best to avoid imagining, almost as if out of superstitious fear. She savored waiting for him, she savored the feeling of missing him, she savored the hiddenness of their affair, just as she would have savored living with him in the light of day. Every moment of happiness was a thing unto itself.
And if, over these past two months, she had occasionally caught herself getting mawkish over sappy love songs that she chanced to hear, she didn’t feel in the least troubled by the songs’ hackneyed themes of “you and only you” or “forever and ever”. Since her only moral principle was not to lie to herself, she found herself being gradually but inexorably pulled into a state of involuntary but profound cynicism. It was almost as if her honest tracking of her emotions had this cynicism as an inevitable consequence, whereas cheaters and liars could preserve their unbridled romanticism over the entire course of their lives. She adored Antoine but she cared for Charles; Antoine made her happy, but she at least did not make Charles unhappy. Cherishing both at once, she didn’t care enough about being of one mind to feel self-contempt for sharing herself between the two of them. Her utter lack of self-importance made her passionate. In a word, she was happy.
It was through a complete accident that she found out one day that she could suffer.
It had been three days since she’d seen Antoine, as the vicissitudes of Parisian life had carried the two of them to different sets of theaters and dinners. She was supposed to meet him at four o’clock, and she arrived on time, but to her surprise, he didn’t open the door to let her in. For the first time ever, she made use of the key he’d given her. No one was there, the shutters were open, and for an instant she thought that she’d mistakenly entered someone else’s apartment, since the room she had always come to was a dark room, in which Antoine would habitually turn on only a red floor lamp that lit up nothing but the bed and a little patch of ceiling. Intrigued, she walked around this room, at once so familiar and so unfamiliar to her, reading the titles of the books on the shelves, picking up a tie on the floor, scrutinizing a rather droll and charming turn-of-the-century painting that she’d never before even noticed. All at once she found herself looking at her lover as a young bachelor, occasionally hard-working, quite modest and simple. So who was this Antoine? Where did he come from? What were his parents like? What had his childhood been like?
She sat down on the bed, and then, suddenly feeling uneasy, stood back up and walked over to the window. She felt like an intruder in a stranger’s home, she felt she shouldn’t be there. And most of all, for the first time it hit her that Antoine was not like her, but was another — an other, a not her — and that all her intimacy with his hands, his mouth, his eyes, his body, did not mean he was her irrevocable soulmate. And where was he, anyway? It was 4:15, she hadn’t seen him for three whole days, and the damn phone wasn’t even ringing. She meandered about in the sad little room, from the door to the window and back, she pulled out a book at random, flipped it open, couldn’t make sense of what she was reading, closed it and reshelved it. Time was passing. If he couldn’t make it, he could at least have phoned her. She picked the phone up, hoping to find it was out of order, but no such luck. And what if he just didn’t feel like coming? This thought suddenly made her freeze in the middle of the room, stock still but quiveringly alert, the way certain soldiers look in old engravings, just after having been struck by a fatal bullet. And out of nowhere, a host of memories st
arted swirling before her eyes: the time when she thought she’d detected some anger in Antoine’s eyes — maybe it had actually been boredom with her; that other time he’d hesitated when she’d asked what was troubling him — well, maybe it wasn’t due to his fear of upsetting her, as she’d thought then, but to his fear of hurting her by confessing the truth: that he no longer loved her. And in a flash she mentally replayed a dozen scenes with Antoine, now reperceiving them all as revealing his loss of interest in her.
“All right, then,” she said aloud, “so he doesn’t love me any more.” She said it softly and calmly, but instantly the words flew straight back at her, stinging her like the crack of a whip, and reflexively her hand rushed up to her neck to ward off the blow. “Oh, what am I going to do with myself if Antoine doesn’t love me any more?” And a bleak future loomed before her, drained of lifeblood, warmth, and laughter, like that petrified cinder-covered plain in Peru that had recently appeared in a photograph in Paris-Match and that had aroused a somewhat morbid fascination on Antoine’s part.
She remained standing, succumbing to an internal shaking that grew so violent that she had to consciously come to her own rescue. “Come on, come on,” she repeated aloud, “Come on,” addressing the words to her own body and her heart, as if to two frightened horses. She lay down on the bed, trying to make herself breathe very quietly. It didn’t work. Hit by an attack of panic and despair, she curled up into a ball, wrapping her arms about her shoulders, burying her face in the pillow. She heard herself moaning “Antoine, Antoine…”, and simultaneously with this unbearable pain, she was overcome by a sense of bewilderment. “You are out of your mind,” she told herself, “out of your mind,” yet some other alien voice inside her, for once much stronger, cried out, “But Antoine’s yellow eyes, Antoine’s voice — what will you ever do without Antoine, you idiot?” Five o’clock rang out from the steeple of a nearby church, and she felt as if some cruel and crazed god was ringing the bells just in order to taunt her.
The next moment, Antoine walked in. As soon as he saw the expression on her face, he stopped in his tracks, then dropped down beside her on the bed. He went wild with joy, though he had no idea why, covering her face and her hair with tender kisses, explaining his lateness, and lambasting his boss for having called him into his office and kept him there for an hour. Lucile clung to him, murmuring his name in a voice still very unsure of itself. Finally she sat up in the bed and turned away from him.
“You know, Antoine,” she said, “I love you, and it’s for keeps.”
“Me too,” he replied, “so it works out nicely.”
For a while they remained wordless and meditative. Then Lucile gave a resigned little laugh, turned back to face him, and watched him intently as the face she adored slowly drew nearer to her own.
CHAPTER 10
As she was going out the door two hours later, she de cided it had all been a crazy fluke. Exhausted from lovemaking, content with the world, and with her head clear, she found herself thinking that the roots of her half-hour of panic had more to do with nerves than with love, and she resolved to sleep more, drink less, and so on. She was far too used to living in her own private world to be able to accept the idea that anyone or anything could be indispensable to her. The very notion struck her as shocking rather than desirable.
As her car quietly glided along the bends of the Seine, she drove in a trance-like state, admiring the golden river ahead of her on one of the first beautiful spring evenings. A smile crossed her face. “What on earth got into me? At my age? With my lifestyle? After all, I’m someone’s mistress, I’m supposed to be a cynical woman.” This thought made her chuckle, and the driver of a nearby car, waiting for the light to change, gave her a friendly smile that she absent-mindedly returned, still buried in her musings. “So who am I?” How she might appear to others, or, for that matter, to herself, was of no import whatsoever to her. She paid no attention to how she acted; was this a sin? A sign of mental decay? When younger, she had read a great deal before realizing that she was fulfilled. And she had gone through a long period of soul-searching before turning into the well-fed and well-dressed pet that she now was, so adroit at sidestepping life’s difficult situations. Where was she headed, what was she doing with her life?
Thanks to a peculiar lifeline in her palm, she had long since accepted the notion that she would die young — in fact, she took it for granted as her fate. But what if she were to grow old, instead? She tried to envision herself as poor, decrepit, abandoned by Charles, drearily toiling away in some completely unrewarding job. She did her best to give herself a good scare, but it didn’t work. Rather, it crossed her mind that whatever happened, the Seine, as it flowed by the Grand Palais, would always be just as golden and luminous as today, and that that was all that really mattered. She had no need of this purring vehicle, nor of this silky Laroche coat, in order to live — of that she was quite sure. And Charles, too, was quite sure of it, and that made him miserable. And each time she left Antoine’s apartment, she felt herself overcome by such a rush of tenderness for Blassans-Lignières, and such a great longing to bring him happiness.
She had no idea that right now, Charles, who always expected to find her waiting for him when he got back from work, was pacing back and forth in his bedroom, just as she had been doing three hours earlier, and that he was asking himself the very same question: “What if she never came back again?” But she didn’t suspect any of this nor did she find out, because when she walked in, Charles was stretched out on his bed, placidly reading Le Monde. The sound of her car was always a dead giveaway. In a calm voice he asked her, “Did You have a good day?”, and she tenderly kissed him. He often wore a cologne that she very much liked, and she thought to herself that she really ought to buy a bottle of it for Antoine.
“Pretty nice,” she said. “I was just scared that…” But she caught herself. She felt like opening up to Charles, telling him everything — “I was scared I would lose Antoine, I was scared of loving him.” But she couldn’t do it. And so she had no one to tell about this weird afternoon, never having been one to confide in people, and it made her feel somehow sad.
“I was scared of the idea of living on the sidelines,” she finished up in a flustered manner.
“On the sidelines of what?”
“Of life. Or at least what other people call life. Charles, does a person really have to love someone, or at least have an unhappy love affair, really have to work, make their own money, accomplish things, in order to live life truly?”
“It’s not an absolute necessity,” said Charles, lowering his gaze, “as long as one is happy.”
“And You think that’s enough?”
“Easily,” he replied. And something in his voice, some unexpected little quaver that made him seem far away, lost in wistful thoughts, tore at Lucile’s heart.
She sat down on the bed, reached over and caressed his weary face. Charles closed his eyes and smiled gently. She felt compassionate, generous, able to make him happy — and it didn’t occur to her that all these warm feelings might merely be because Antoine had come back, and that if he hadn’t, then she might well have despised Charles instead. When one is happy, one willingly shares the credit for one’s happiness with others, and it’s only when one is suffering that one realizes they were nothing but insignificant observers of one’s joy.
“What are we doing tonight?” asked Lucile.
“We’ve got a dinner at Diane’s,” said Charles. “Had You forgotten about it?” His voice was disbelieving and delighted at the same time. She instantly guessed how come, and blushed. If she were to reply “Yes,” although she’d be telling the truth, she would also be misleading him. And yet she surely couldn’t say to him, “I’d forgotten about the dinner, but not about Antoine. In fact, I’ve just gotten back from his place. And we were so lost in our passion that when we said goodbye we thought we wouldn’t see each other until tomorrow.”
What she instead said was, “I h
adn’t forgotten about the dinner, but I didn’t know it was at her place. Which dress do You want me to put on?”
Actually, she was surprised that she didn’t feel more joy at the prospect of seeing Antoine again in just a few hours. Instead, she was vaguely annoyed at the thought. With Antoine, she had reached a paroxysm of euphoria that afternoon, and it struck her that her cup was pretty much full, if that metaphor could be applied to one’s emotions. The fact was, she would much rather have shared a relaxed dinner with Charles. And she was just about to say this to him when she cut herself short: doing so would give him too much pleasure based on a lie, and she didn’t want to lie to him.
“What were You about to say?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Your metaphysical reflections make You look even more muddled than usual.”
She gave a little laugh. “So I look muddled most of the time?”
“Completely! I wouldn’t ever let You travel all alone, for example. If I did, I’d finally catch up with You a week later, in the transit lounge of some godforsaken little burg’s railway station, surrounded by heaps of paperback novels and totally up on the lives of all the place’s bartenders…”
He looked almost serious in describing this droll scenario, and she erupted in laughter. He must really think her incapable of dealing with life, and in a burst of clarity it hit her that this was what tied her to him, far more than any need for security. The point was, he fully accepted her lack of responsibility, he approved of the unconscious choice she’d made, fifteen years earlier, to remain an eternal adolescent. This was the very choice that without a doubt drove Antoine up a wall. And quite possibly, the perfect alignment between what she wanted to be and what Charles saw in her might just turn out to be stronger than any fiery affair that would require her to give up her way of being.