He had noticed that she was very demonstrative in public, yet far less so once they were alone. At her parents’ place she fondled him to the verge of indecency. In the street she walked in step with him like some Siamese twin. Around photographers she clung to him as if to a life buoy. But behind closed doors Mia immediately asserted her need for personal space, and she even went so far as to make fun of self-sufficient little couples with their sappy kissing. He had observed the way she held back, giving only the absolute minimum, in order to keep her partner in a state of dependency—something Philippe referred to as emotional Malthusianism. He preferred to see this not as emotional self-restraint but as naïve calculation, in order to keep him with her as long as possible. A third clue, even more worrying, was Mia’s refusal to envision her future, the day when her approval ratings in the glamour world began to decline. Philippe had asked her, Have you thought about afterwards? Initially she had dodged the subject, convinced as she was that nothing could be as good as the life she was leading at the moment, and then she replied, Have children, and then, we’ll see, maybe become an actress.
“‘With her, life is never real’ . . . Do you think we’ll be satisfied with that?”
“Do you want proof? This time next Thursday, I’ll be in a luxury hotel in Bali, with one of the most beautiful creatures in the world. I’ll be sipping on a dry Martini by the pool, looking out over the ocean, while you will be surrounded by a hundred sniveling guys in a concrete basement. Console yourselves with the thought that all this good male bonding will make you better people.”
A six-day photo shoot for Vanity Fair, that was how Mia had presented it to him. Six photos for an American monthly. The ordinary paradise of fashion magazines, the lazy imagery of a dreamlike otherworld. Philippe wondered how, in the third millennium, that cliché could still sell. I managed to slip you into my contract, my agency will take care of everything. Philippe Saint-Jean, no less, who had attended lectures with Michel Foucault at the Collège de France, had been slipped into a contract. Travel first class, stay in a luxury suite at the finest hotel in Southeast Asia. All you have to do is say yes. Philippe had nothing against the idea of saying yes, but yes to what? To the change of scene? To the luxury? To the colors of a postcard? In case you’re feeling guilty, tell yourself that you’ll get a lot more work done there than in your dried up little study. Phrased differently, that was the only argument that seemed admissible. Philippe never left Paris other than to attend a seminar or a book fair. Back in the days when Juliette agreed to go along with him, that could mean an escapade in a boutique hotel, with some local sightseeing and time for tasting regional specialties: quite an adventure for a guy like him. He felt no need to disrupt a work routine that allowed him to travel much farther than any tour operator could. To him, the word vacation had a nuance of vulgarity, unless he lopped off the suffix and was left with the verb and its emphasis on desertion. And now the intrepid Mia was disrupting his everyday routine, pointing to a certain ossification: what if, because it had never been questioned, his beloved routine had turned him into a sluggard? A puny intellectual crushed by his sedentary lifestyle, drained by inertia, worn out before his time? The trip she was suggesting would be the perfect opportunity to take a good look at his working methods. For that reason alone he agreed to follow her to the antipodes, and he planned to take no computer and no books, only his little notebook, just in case he felt inspired as he sat beneath a palm tree.
Certain that this would be his last glass in the company of Yves and Denis, Philippe took his time. He knew how partitioned the world could be, how life could dismiss the people met in exceptional circumstances, how much memory disposed of those who had witnessed your moments of weakness. And the further behind he left the Thursday sessions, the greater the risk he’d have nothing to say to these two, and his search for that lost complicity would be in vain. Moreover, neither Yves nor Denis suggested meeting again, elsewhere, later on, as they might have done had they felt the bonds of true friendship. They weren’t kidding themselves, so all that was left was to say goodbye, with a touch of irony.
“If we haven’t swapped phone numbers up to now,” said Yves, “we’re not about to do so this evening.”
“You never know,” said Philippe, “I may need some new windows. Now that you’ve introduced me to the charms of galvanized metal windowframes, I’ve gone back over some of my preconceived ideas. What does a philosopher do, other than look at the world through his window? He is duty bound to keep up with the latest technology in the domain—good soundproofing so he won’t be distracted by the racket of civilization, and reflective film to be able to see without being seen, like some kindly observer keeping an eye on everything. Yves Lehaleur, you can make me into that superior being.”
“I’m going to miss not having any intellectuals among my acquaintances. It’s some consolation to think that at last I’ll be able to read one of your books. As long as we were buddies, I kept putting it off, I was afraid I wouldn’t understand a thing and I said to myself, ‘Can you go on drinking beer with a guy when you can’t make head or tail of his theories?’”
“Read On Being Casual. I don’t really know what you mean by theory, but there isn’t any in that book.”
“And I’d like to invite you to come and dine at the brasserie,” said Denis, “but only if you come with Mia. I don’t need to tell you how many brownie points I’d get with the boss if you did.”
“If you cook up that green seaweed you can only find in Japan—you’re on.”
Philippe got up, shook hands, and headed home, already nostalgic for the mysterious postures of those who, once upon a time, were members of a secret society.
Ever since one woman had scorned the regular nice guy he had been trying so hard to become, a hundred others were now contributing to reveal the new Lehaleur, a guy he’d never have imagined even in his wildest dreams. This man used to be married? Had to be an impostor. In the long run, he wouldn’t have known how to keep up the act: he’d have languished, would have allowed bitterness to eat away at his relationship and he’d have ended up blaming his wife for all the women he’d never known. And what a sacrilege that would have been, never to have known Beatrice, who had told him about Albane, who’d introduced him to Mariya, who’d recommended Éléonore. Yves quickly forgot the bad experiences and kept only the magical moments, without trying to retain or reproduce them.
Kim, his first Asian, had scrubbed and massaged his entire body. A treatment fit for a warrior. In the morning he had felt strong enough to raise an army of samurai, but he’d done nothing more than go and install windows. Mona, between two depraved adventures, had asked to be spanked; Yves had managed to assert enough authority to spice up the game and act the dominator. In the grip of an irrepressible strength he discovered how much female docility could excite him, as part of a tacit, sealed pact. This was confirmed to him several nights later when Camille suggested bringing her friend Rachel along. She’s a she-devil . . . A dream was about to become reality, and he hadn’t even had to wish for it. The two of them had given him an infinite number of enchanting experiences, all of which he’d been eager to try. When they saw how presumptuous he was about his abilities they made fun of him, but respected his stage directions. In the morning he awoke with Camille lying curled against his side, and Rachel curled against Camille: clearly the most delightful of all their postures. With Éla, the redhead from the Middle East, he had dared far worse by reversing the roles; during the entire session he had treated her like a client who is paying for a gigolo: What would make you happy? A question that is eminently more delectable for the one asking than for the one who hears it.
However, the delightful frisson he had felt whenever he opened his door to a stranger eventually began to wear off. His frenetic search for novelty was exhausting him physically, and the two or three sessions required to wear down a newcomer’s mistrust were taking more and more out of him. Yves pre
ferred to devote his time to the girls he explored a bit more with each visit, of whom there were four, not counting Kris.
Agnieszka, his Polish girl with her angelic face. Instead of driving them further apart, the language barrier had brought them closer. If she could talk about herself without a care whether she was understood, Yves felt no need to try and convince her. Their squeals, laughter, caresses, and the way they raised their glasses to each other were far more eloquent than any articulated sentence might have been. Between each bout of lovemaking they rambled, got carried away, made fun of each other.
“Jak be˛de˛ kurwi´c sie˛ dalej to nie ma mowy o yało z.eniu rodziny.”
“Who do you sleep with without getting paid?”
“Nie ba˛d´z za dumny z tego twojego kutasa.”
“Yesterday I installed electric shutters at an insane asylum.”
“Te˛sknie˛ za rodzicami i za siostra˛ tez..”
Between two naps, they opened their hearts, moaned, consoled each other. Their intonation was often enough to indicate when they were being ironic, or naughty, or serious. Their silence spoke of sadness, calm, or trust. Thanks to Agnieszka, Yves had regained an acute ability to listen, something he had lost after a few years of marriage. He no longer blamed his ex-wife for it, he alone was at fault; over time he could not hear anything in Pauline’s silences anymore, not even distress, boredom, or disappointment. Laziness had prevailed over male courtesy, criticism over praise. With Agnieszka he need not fear the erosion of the lovers’ dialogue. Yves indulged in the pleasures of another conversation, bringing his lips to her sex, to her own fine lips, mute until he kissed them.
With Sylvie, time went by just as sweetly, but on a very different register. She belonged to a sort of daytime variety that bloomed in natural light. Whenever he managed to have a free afternoon, Yves would entertain her until the fading light drove her away. Sylvie was a greedy, voluptuous creature, a subversive sort. Buttocks, hips, breasts of total impunity: her curves were outrageous for the era but she assumed them, arrogantly. She summed up in her person so many of the lost battles of her sex. She couldn’t care less about independence, and was fully prepared to live off the largesse of men. The word effort was not in her vocabulary, but excessive hedonism was; even as an adolescent she had not tried to fight her tendency to put on weight, but had made it her own style, her way of life. She liked to be naked, she liked sitting around doing nothing, she liked posing for imaginary painters, she liked surrendering completely to her indolence. She was mad about pears, no matter the season, and she ate pastries straight from the box. If a stranger in the street called her fat she just laughed, and if someone tried to reduce her to the rank of an object, she gladly pictured herself as a monumental sculpture, replete with symbolism. She purred when Yves caressed her from head to toe, on a tactile journey that frequently explored unexpected detours. She called her clients my men, and she respected them all, for they all sent back to her the reflection of an earth goddess. Two of them, however, had a special status.
Like so many of her co-practitioners, Sylvie was saddled with a meal ticket man, an indulgent boyfriend who was a borderline small-time pimp, acting mister tough guy at home, then going for a stroll when madam had company. Yves could not understand how such a likeable, tactful person as Sylvie could be infatuated with such an odious partner, a nervous, cowardly, authoritarian little guy, whose sole empire here on earth was the one she let him have. He’s mean and nasty, I know, but he has no one but me.
Fortunately, the other man in her life, a certain Grégoire, who’d been her client right from the start, had confessed his feelings to her one day. And this man’s story, absurd and whimsical, would have been perfect material for the Thursday evening crowd. Grégoire was rich, good-looking, and single as well, but he was incapable of assuming his passion for Sylvie in public. Not because she was a sex worker, but because he was the most sought-after dietician in the capital. His problem is that he can’t get it up with anorexic girls . . . Grégoire venerated Sylvie’s body the way a powerful man venerates his dominatrix. Sometimes they met in his office, where she would play the part of a patient obsessed with her weight, and he would fall at her feet, overcome by an irresistible desire to throw his arms around her waist and press his head against her belly in a sweet, regressive pose. When he invited her to his house, he had to take a thousand precautions so that no one met her in the stairs, but once they were behind closed doors he allowed his untold fantasies of opulence to run wild, along with his raging desire to lose himself in the folds of her flesh.
“It took him years to create his range of products, meal replacements, draining teas, things like that. He’s opening stores all over. He’s friends with movie stars. Got his picture in Paris-Match. It’s not that he’d mind having a whore on his arm, on the contrary, it would be the trendy thing. But a fat one, well . . . ”
Yves listened sympathetically, but cautiously refrained from reacting and left Sylvie torn between her pathetic pimp and her shame-riddled client.
Then there was Céline, the hot-blooded beast. Yves had found his female mate in her. Arch, claw, grunt, gnash, devour. Their desire was of the rutting kind, their moans were growls. When they had an appointment to meet that evening, Yves would spend the day in a feverish state until she arrived, at which point she would show off her ever-changing lingerie before throwing herself on her client. Céline did not have one ounce of modesty, nor the slightest complex; she went along with everything, and never stood on ceremony. Back in the days when he was married Yves had always been careful, as had Pauline, to respect a certain limit, which had never been set: the limit where something intimate could lapse into something dirty. All it had taken was a few gestures of avoidance on either one’s part for them both to identify and proscribe that dark territory where only the depraved made love. Did you have to be tormented by vile instincts to strive never to yield to them? Céline was so carnal that what came across was her innocence; nothing was dirty or perverse, it was all divinely natural. Yves saw it as nothing more, or less, than the expression of a licentious tenderness.
I love sex, but that’s not why I’m a whore. Céline had another professional ideal which seemed far less accessible to her than prostitution.
“I was trained as a ceramist.”
Yves gave her a questioning look.
“I was trained in Sèvres, I have a diploma in applied arts, and I did my internship with the best potter there. I know how to produce and paint plates and vases, I even designed a few models that are still on sale. There’s one of my coffee cups in the shop at the Musée d’Art moderne.”
“So what are you doing here with me, stark naked, instead of standing by your kiln?”
“I still don’t know if I’m a whore with a certain talent for ceramics, or a ceramist who’ll be a whore until the day she can live from her art.”
While Yves loved these three women for who they were, he loved Maud for who she was not. Right from the start she had made it clear to him that she was not a prostitute but an escort, and she claimed that she herself chose the men to whom she dispensed her favors, never the contrary. She thought of herself as high-class, a thoroughbred, a geisha, the noble fringe of whoredom. To hear her, you’d think she spent her days in luxury hotels, surrounded by the great and good who paid dearly for her company. Did she herself believe it, or was it enough for her to convince others of it? Maud was a counterfeiter. What a joy it was to see her arrive in her Chanel uniform, with her Dior glasses and a Jack Russell under her arm—the poor beast was used to waiting patiently on a rug in a corner while his mistress purveyed her services. Maud wore just enough makeup to look her best, and relied on a year-round suntan that was hardly the result of sun in the Seychelles, but rather that of exorbitantly expensive sessions on a sun-bed. She would sit sideways on the sofa, legs crossed, sipping a cup of Darjeeling with a spot of milk, always poured afterwards, not before, then she wou
ld tell him some story about a mission overseas that was virtually a state secret. Yves found her lack of self-knowledge touching: did it require the candor of an adolescent to see oneself as a courtesan in the new millennium? What was Maud’s backstory, to have reached this point? Perhaps it was nothing more than a summer spent on a yacht, with a millionaire persuading her to satisfy his whims; a summer that had lasted long enough for her to be introduced to other millionaires determined to have a taste of her youth. At the end of that summer, obviously unable to maintain the lifestyle, she had adopted Maud’s persona, never to leave it again.
Whatever you do, don’t get undressed! ordered Yves before taking her standing up, in her suit and lace stockings. Oh, how talented Maud was at appearing respectable. Mannerisms of a dowager, a demi-mondaine’s erudition, the learned phrasing of a Lady Bountiful. Through her, Yves was fucking the schoolteacher, the lady of the manor, the wife of the mayor or the banker, not to mention all his inaccessible window clients in posh neighborhoods. How many Mauds had he visited dressed in his overalls, burdened with fanlights and soundproofing material? Almost all of them had offered him a beer and called him a technician to avoid using the word worker. He was amused by the way they would say This is for you as they slipped a bill into the hand of the laboring man. Wrapped in silks, with a whiff of Guerlain, rarely haughty but just a bit too affable. Maud incarnated them all. Enough to cure him most delightfully of his class complex.
Unable to find a rational explanation for the intruder’s presence, Denis was forced to reconsider his own mental health. After all, as he had never so much as touched or even grazed Marie-Jeanne Pereyres accidentally, he had no proof of her physical existence. She had appeared when he was in the depths of his depression: perhaps she was some emanation of his unconscious, sapped as it had been by five years of frustration? Plagued by a syndrome of delirium, his troubled mind had fabricated the obsessive image of a desire: Marie-Jeanne Pereyres did not exist. Had he been given more effective medication, she would never have materialized.