18
REUNIONS
The railcar to Crécy-la-Chapelle had been replaced by a commuter train. The village itself had changed considerably. He stopped for a moment in the square outside the station and looked around in surprise. There was a Casino superstore on the outskirts of Crécy on avenue Général-Leclerc. In every direction he could see new houses and office buildings.
It had all happened around the time EuroDisney opened, explained a clerk at the town hall, and the extension of the commuter railway as far as Marne-la-Vallée. Many Parisians chose to move here; land prices had more than tripled, and the last of the farmers sold off their fields. Now there was a complex comprising a gym, community center and two swimming pools. Delinquency posed some problems, but no more than anywhere else.
As he passed the old houses and the canals on his way to the cemetery, he felt the sadness and confusion of anyone returning to his childhood home. Crossing the covered way, he found himself opposite the windmill. The seat where he and Annabelle liked to sit after school was still there. In the dark waters, huge fish swam against the current. Sunshine briefly broke through the clouds.
. . .
The man was waiting for Michel at the cemetery gates. “Are you the . . .”
“Yes.” What did they call gravediggers nowadays? He was carrying a spade and a black plastic bag. Michel walked close behind him. “You don’t have to look . . .” he muttered as they approached the open grave.
Death is difficult to understand; only reluctantly does a person resign himself to face a precise image of it. Michel had seen the body of his grandmother twenty years before and had kissed her for the last time. Nevertheless, he was at first surprised by what he saw in the excavation. His grandmother had been buried in a coffin, but among the freshly dug earth there remained only fragments of broken wood, a rotting board and indistinct white fragments. When he realized what he was looking at he quickly turned his head and forced himself to look the other way, but it was too late. He had seen the skull caked with earth, clumps of white hair falling over empty sockets. He had seen her vertebrae scattered in the clay. He understood.
The man continued to fill the plastic bag, glancing over at Michel, devastated, beside him. “Always the same,” he muttered. “Can’t help themselves, they have to look. Coffin’s not going to last twenty years, is it?” he said almost angrily. Michel walked a few paces behind as the gravedigger poured the contents of the bag into their new resting place. Once he finished his work, the man stood up, came over and asked, “You all right?” Michel nodded. “We’ll move the headstone tomorrow. Sign here for me.”
That was that. After twenty years, that was that. Bones and earth mingled together and the mass of white hair, so much of it, so alive. He could see his grandmother embroidering in front of the television, walking toward the kitchen. That was that. As he passed the Bar des Sports, he realized he was trembling. He went in and ordered a pastis. When he sat down he noticed the interior was completely different from the way he remembered it. There was a pool table and video games; a television tuned to MTV was blaring out music; the cover of Newlook pinned to the bulletin board featured the Fantasies of Zara Whites and the great white shark in Australia. He gradually slipped into a gentle doze.
. . .
It was Annabelle who recognized him first. She’d just bought cigarettes and was heading for the door when she saw him slumped on the bench. She hesitated for a second or two before coming up to him. He looked up. “This is a surprise,” she said softly; then she sat across from him on the leatherette seat. She had hardly changed. Her face was still incredibly smooth and pure, her hair dazzlingly blonde. It seemed impossible that she could be forty; at most she looked twenty-seven or twenty-eight.
She was in Crécy for reasons similar to his own. “My father died a week ago,” she said. “Cancer of the bowel. It was long and difficult—and excruciatingly painful. I stayed for a bit to help Mom out. The rest of the time I live in Paris, like you.”
Michel looked down. There was a moment’s silence. At the next table, two young guys were talking about karate.
“I ran into Bruno about three years ago, at an airport. He told me you were a scientist—and important, well known in your field. He told me you’d never married. My life is less brilliant—I’m a librarian in a local library. I never married either. I’ve often thought about you. I hated you when you didn’t answer my letters. That was twenty-three years ago, but I still think about it sometimes.”
She walked him to the station. It was almost six and getting dark. They stopped on the bridge over the Grand Morin. There were plants in the water, chestnut trees, willows; the water was still and green. Corot loved this scene and had painted it many times. An old man in his garden looked like a scarecrow. “We’re at the same point now,” said Annabelle, “the same distance from death.”
She stood on the step of the train and kissed him on both cheeks just before it pulled out. “I’ll see you again,” he said. She answered: “Yes.”
She invited him to dinner the following Saturday. She was living in a studio apartment on the rue Legendre. It was very small, but the place seemed warm and inviting—the walls and the ceiling were paneled in dark wood like the cabin of a boat. “I’ve been living here for eight years,” she said. “I moved in when I passed my library exams. Before that I worked in the coproduction unit at TF1. I’d had enough—I didn’t like working in television. I lost two thirds of my salary when I changed jobs, but I like it much better. I work in the children’s section in the public library in the seventeenth arrondissement.”
She had made a lamb curry with dal. Michel said little as they ate. He asked Annabelle about her family. Her elder brother had taken over the family business. He was married with three children—a boy and two girls. Unfortunately, the business was in trouble; competition in precision optics was fierce, and on more than one occasion he had almost filed for bankruptcy. He drowned his sorrows drinking pastis and voting for Le Pen. Her younger brother had gone into the marketing department at L’Oréal and had recently been made marketing director for North America; they didn’t see much of him. He was divorced, childless. Two completely different fates, but both somehow equally archetypal.
“I haven’t really had a happy life,” said Annabelle. “I think I was too obsessed with love. I fell for guys too easily; once they got what they wanted, they dumped me and I got hurt. It took me years to come to terms with the cliché that men don’t make love because they’re in love, but because they’re turned on. Everyone around me knew that and lived like that—I grew up in a liberated environment—but I never enjoyed the game for its own sake. In the end, even the sex started to disgust me; I couldn’t stand their triumphant little smiles when I took off my dress, or their idiot leers when they came and especially their boorishness once it was all over and done with. They were spineless, pathetic and pretentious. In the end, it was too painful to know they thought of me as just another piece of meat. I was a prime cut, I suppose, because I was physically perfect, and they were proud to take me out and show me off in a restaurant. Only once did I think I was involved in a serious relationship; I even moved in with him. He was an actor, and there was something very imposing about him physically, but he never really made it—in fact I paid most of the bills. We lived together for two years and then I got pregnant. He asked me to have an abortion. I did. But as I was coming back from the hospital I knew it was over. I moved out that night and checked into a hotel for a while. I was thirty. It was my second abortion and I couldn’t take much more. This was in 1988 and everyone was starting to worry about AIDS. For me it was a salvation. I’d slept with dozens of men and there wasn’t one of them worth remembering. People think that when you’re young you go out and have fun, and only later do you start to think about death. But every man I ever met was terrified of getting old. They worried all the time about how old they were. They get obsessed about it when they’re quite young—I’ve seen twenty-five-
year-olds worried about getting old—and it just gets worse. I decided to give up, to stop playing the game. I live a quiet, joyless life. In the evening I read, I make herbal tea and hot drinks. I go to see my parents every weekend and spend a lot of time looking after my nephew and my nieces. Sometimes I get scared at night; I have trouble sleeping; it’s true I need a man around. I take tranquilizers and sleeping pills, but they’re never really enough. I just want life to go by as quickly as possible.”
Michel said nothing; he wasn’t surprised. For many women, adolescence is exciting—they’re really interested in boys and sex. But gradually they lose interest; they’re not so keen to open their legs or to get on their knees and wiggle their ass. They’re looking for a tender relationship they never will find, for a passion they’re no longer capable of feeling. Thus they begin the difficult years.
Folded out, the sofa bed took up most of the room. “I’ve never actually used it before,” Annabelle said. They lay down side by side and held each other.
“I haven’t been on the pill for a long time, and I haven’t got any condoms. Do you have any?”
“No.” He smiled at the very idea.
“Would you like me to take you in my mouth?”
He thought for a moment and at last said “Yes.” It was pleasant, though not intensely so; in fact, it never had been. Sexual pleasure that’s so intense for some is faint, almost insignificant for others (a result of culture, neural connections or what?). There was a poignancy in the act, which symbolized their reunion, their interrupted destiny. But afterward, it was wonderful to take Annabelle in his arms when she turned away to sleep. Her body was soft and pliant, warm and perfectly smooth; she had a slim waist, big hips and small, firm breasts. He slipped a leg between hers and placed his hands on her stomach and breasts; in this warmth, this softness, he was at the dawn of the world. He fell asleep almost immediately.
At first he saw a man, a form in space, only his face was visible. The expression in his eyes as they flashed in the darkness was difficult to decipher. There was a mirror facing him. When he first looked into it, the man felt as though he were falling into an abyss. But then he sat down and studied his reflection as though it were a thing apart, a mental image unrelated to him, transferable to others. After a minute, he began to feel more or less indifferent, though if he turned away, even for a few seconds, he had to begin again. Once more, he had to force himself, painfully—as one begins to focus on a nearby object—to shatter the feeling of identification with his reflection. The self is an intermittent neurosis, and this man was far from cured.
Then he saw a smooth, white wall and, as though from within, letters began to form upon it. Little by little they rose, creating a moving bas-relief in time to a nauseating throb. At first it resolved into the word PEACE, then into WAR, then PEACE reappeared. Then, suddenly, the phenomenon ceased and the surface of the wall was as smooth as before. The atmosphere seemed to liquefy, pulsing in waves; the sun was an immense yellow. He could see to a distant point, the root of time itself. This root sent out tendrils across the universe, knotty at the center, their tips cold and sticky. They wound around, encircled and encapsulated portions of space.
He saw the brain of the dead man as a part of space, containing space.
Last, he saw the mental aggregate of space and its opposite. He saw the mental conflict through which space was structured, and saw it disappear. He saw space as a thin line separating two spheres. In the first sphere there was being and separation, and in the second was nonbeing and the destruction of the individual. Calmly, without a moment’s hesitation, he turned and walked toward the second sphere.
He extricated himself from their embrace and sat up. Annabelle’s breathing was deep and regular. She had a cube-shaped Sony alarm clock which read 3:37. Could he get back to sleep? He had to get back to sleep. He had some Xanax with him.
In the morning, she made him coffee while she had tea and toast. The weather was beautiful, though it was already a little cold. She looked at his naked body; his still skinny frame seemed strangely adolescent. They were both forty, which was difficult to believe. Nonetheless, she could no longer have children without running the risk that they would be genetically malformed; his virility had already largely ebbed. From the point of view of the good of the species, they were a couple of aging human beings of middling genetic value. She had lived a bit: taken cocaine, participated in orgies, stayed in luxury hotels. Her beauty had put her at the epicenter of the movement of moral liberation which was such a major part of her youth. As a result, she had suffered greatly—in the end, she would almost give her life for it. His indifference had left him on the periphery both of that movement, and of life, and of everything, so he barely had been touched by it. He had been content to be faithful to his local Monoprix and to coordinate research in molecular biology.
Their different existences had left few visible marks on their separate bodies, but life itself had long since begun its work of destruction, slowly overburdening the capacity of cells and their organelles to replicate. Intelligent mammals capable of loving one another, they looked at each other on this autumn morning. “I know we’ve left it a bit late,” she said, “but I’d still like to try. I still have my train pass from 1974–75, the last year we were at school together. Every time I look at it, I feel like crying. I can’t understand how things can have gotten so fucked up. I just can’t accept it.”
19
In the midst of the suicide of the West, it was clear they had no chance. They continued to see each other, however, once or twice a week. Annabelle visited her gynecologist and went back on the pill. Michel proved able to penetrate her, but what he liked most was simply sleeping next to her, feeling her living flesh. One night he dreamed of a carnival in Rouen, on the right bank of the Seine. There was a Ferris wheel, almost empty, turning slowly against a livid sky, dominating a landscape of decrepit freighters and metallic structures eaten away by rust. He walked past the sideshows, the colors alternately dim and garish; a glacial wind whipped rain against his face. As he came to the exit, he was attacked by a number of razor-wielding youths in leather. They laid into him for some minutes and then let him go on. His eyes were bleeding; he knew that he would be blind, and his right hand was almost severed. In spite of the blood and pain, still he knew that Annabelle would stand by him, shielding him forever with her love.
For All Saints’ Day weekend they went to Soulac and stayed in a summer house belonging to Annabelle’s brother. The morning after they arrived, they walked down to the beach together. He was tired and sat on a bench while Annabelle walked on. In the distance the sea roared and heaved, a gray and silver flux. As they broke against the sandbanks on the horizon, the waves threw spray against the sun in a dazzling, beautiful haze. Annabelle’s silhouette, barely visible in her pale jacket, walked along the water’s edge. Circling around the plastic furniture of the Café de la Plage, an old Alsatian was also hard to make out, half erased by a mist of air, water and sunlight.
For dinner she grilled a sea bass; the society in which they lived accorded them a surplus above and beyond their basic nutrional needs, so they could live a little, but in fact they no longer really wanted to. He felt compassion for her, for the boundless reserve of love simmering inside her, which the world had wasted; it was perhaps the only human emotion which could still touch him. As to the rest, a glacial reticence had taken over his body. He simply could no longer love.
Back in Paris they had happy moments together, like stills from a perfume ad (dashing hand in hand down the steps of Montmartre; or suddenly revealed in motionless embrace on the Pont des Arts by the lights of a bateau-mouche as it turned). There were the Sunday afternoon half-arguments, too, the moments of silence when bodies curl up beneath the sheets on the long shores of silence and apathy where life founders. Annabelle’s studio was so dark they had to turn on the lights at four in the afternoon. They sometimes were sad, but mostly they were serious. Both of them knew that this wou
ld be their last human relationship, and this feeling lacerated every moment they spent together. They had a great respect and a profound sympathy for each other, and there were days when, caught up in some sudden magic, they knew moments of fresh air and glorious, bracing sunshine. For the most part, however, they could feel a gray shadow moving over them, on the earth that supported them, and in everything they could glimpse the end.
20
Bruno and Christiane had also returned to Paris, as it was inconceivable not to. On the day they went back to work, he stopped and thought about the unknown doctor who had given them this singular gift, two weeks of unmerited sick leave; then he set off again toward his office on the rue de Grenelle. As he got to his floor, he realized he looked tanned and healthy—which was ridiculous—but he didn’t really care. His colleagues, the thought-provoking seminars, the social development of the adolescent, multiculturalism . . . none of it had the slightest importance for him anymore. Christiane sucked his cock and looked after him when he was ill; Christiane was important. At that moment, he knew he would never see his son again.
Christiane’s son, Patrice, had left her apartment a complete mess: pizza ground into the carpet, empty Coke cans, cigarette butts strewn about, and there were scorchmarks on the floor. She hesitated for a moment, thought about checking into a hotel, but then decided to clean up, to make the place her own again. Noyon was a dirty, dull and dangerous town: she got into the habit of going to Paris every weekend. Most Saturdays, they would go to a club for couples—the 2+2, Chris et Manu, the Chandelles. Their first night at Chris et Manu left a vivid impression on Bruno. Along the dance floor, a number of rooms were bathed in a strange purple glow; beds were set up side by side. All around them couples were fucking, stroking and licking each other. Most of the women were naked, though some wore a blouse or a T-shirt, or had simply hiked up their skirts. In the largest room there were about twenty couples. No one spoke, there was only the steady hum of the air-conditioning and the panting of women as they approached orgasm. He sat on one of the beds next to a tall dark-haired woman with heavy breasts who was being tongued by a man of about fifty who was still wearing a shirt and tie. Christiane opened his trousers and began to jerk him off, glancing around her as she did so. A man came up to them and slipped his hand under her skirt. She unhooked it and let it slip to the floor; she was wearing nothing underneath. The man knelt and began to stroke her as she continued to masturbate Bruno. Beside him on the bed, the dark-haired woman started to moan louder, and he cupped her breasts. He was hard as a rock. Christiane leaned over and began to tease the ridge of his penis and the frenum with the tip of her tongue. Another couple came over and sat beside them; the woman, a redhead of about twenty, was wearing a black fake-leather miniskirt. She watched as Christiane licked his cock; Christiane smiled at her and pulled up her T-shirt to show off her breasts. The other woman hiked up her skirt, revealing her cunt; her lush pubic hair, too, was red. Christiane took her hand and guided it to Bruno’s penis. The woman began to jerk him off while Christiane continued to lick the glans. In a matter of seconds he shuddered with a spasm of pleasure and came all over her face. He sat up quickly and took her in his arms. “I’m sorry,” he said, “really sorry.” She kissed him, pulling him close to her, and he could smell the sperm on her cheeks. “It doesn’t matter,” she said gently, “it really doesn’t.” A little later she said, “Do you want to go?” He nodded sadly, his excitement completely dissipated. They dressed quickly and left immediately.