Still trembling, he asked her to forgive him.
No, it was me, she said.
Neither one needed to add anything. They had to let the awkwardness drain away from the moment, for it was a founding moment. A strange complicity had just been born from that brutal embrace; not from sex. Lovemaking was not the quickest way to get to know one another; the quickest way was this lightning war.
They lay back down, huddled together, still trembling.
In the early morning she said, “I can introduce you to Lili, a colleague of mine. You should hit it off. And Agnieszka if you want someone exotic. Don’t ever forget that a whore is as mistrustful of you as you are of her, so find a way to gain their trust, because if there’s a tiff, she’s got the upper hand. If she asks you outright what you like, the way I did, it’s to get rid of you as quickly as she can. If you want to spend the night with her, don’t pay in advance because she’ll wait for you to fall asleep and then she’ll leave on the sly. If I teach you how to negotiate, after a few nights have gone by you won’t be paying a premium anymore. And, if you don’t take revenge on a whore for all your little woes, she won’t take revenge on you for her hatred of men.”
In a bistro on the Avenue de Friedland, at ten p.m. on the dot, Philippe Saint-Jean and Yves Lehaleur were commenting on the session that had just taken place, for the third time, in their little museum. The last speaker had embarked on a panegyric in praise of married men, leaving the audience speechless. He had separated adult males into two clans, them, the husbands, and us, everyone else, and he included, out of hand, those hundred attendees who had no say in the matter. They were the norm, the natural way of things; we were the anomaly. In an era rife with disenchantment, unbridled consumerism, the abdication of ideology, and individualism raised to the status of a dogma, most men, he said, still believed in the commitment that had been their fathers’ lot and their fathers’ fathers’. Millions and millions of men had taken a woman’s hand in theirs and uttered holy vows in the church or at city hall, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and health, until death do us part. Any other life choice seemed dreary in comparison. Those who had made these vows included lunatics, wise men, torturers, victims, gangsters, believers, atheists, slave drivers, slaves, serial killers, misers, vagabonds. So why them and not us?
Philippe had to admit the fellow had a certain chutzpah; Yves envied him for his charisma, something he wished he had.
“What I appreciated about the way got his point across,” added Philippe, “was that he set out the idea of commitment as a premise right from the start and not some sort of revelation that comes along when you actually meet someone. A touch of Pascal in his way of thinking. Faith first, happiness later.”
Yves was incapable of venturing into Pascalian territory, but he said he was sorry the man’s eloquent speech had not taken into account the evolution from one era to the next and the most recent threat to marital values, including the most dreadful threat of all: male strippers. For while the prostitute on her street corner had been a threat to marital cohesion from time immemorial, the go-go dancer was a very recent threat. The law, if not the biblical texts, needed a complete overhaul.
In a more serious tone, Philippe said he was concerned they hadn’t seen Denis Benitez for the last three sessions.
“Maybe he found the answer he was looking for,” suggested Yves.
The moment he got home from the clinic Denis fell ill; the illness had been faster than the ambulance. He left his bed only twice a day: first at around two and then again at nine in the evening, to make the only meal that didn’t leave him feeling sick to his stomach, a slice of gruyere between two pieces of white bread, tasteless and odorless but substantial enough to stave off the upset stomach caused by every handful of tablets. The rest of the time he slept, but it did not seem to make anything better. Denis was at a stage where the causes of depression had been lost along the way, but that way stretched on ahead, through zones of insalubrity and endless tunnels, to end up in an empty lot where he would stagnate for days on end.
In the beginning his coworkers stopped by to visit, always in pairs to give each other moral support. We’re not the ones who miss you, it’s the diners. Denis thanked them silently, then turned off the volume on the television as soon as they left, to fall asleep with the images of a world as disenchanted as his own.
In the days that followed Denis made a few attempts to get back to normal. The scenario was always the same: he woke before noon, an insane thought running through his head: And what if this ordeal were over? A burst of energy would get him going, he tore off his pajamas as if they were dead skin, put on some pants, picked out a T-shirt, not the red one or the green one, above all not the blue one; maybe the beige. And then, discouraged by the dust, a reflection in a glass of water, a moped roaring in the distance, he went back to bed.
One evening, however, when his friends had deserted him for good, when his entire body had attained a state of utter inertia, when the power of his surrender had triumphed over any sort of hope, he heard the doorbell ring.
He had been asleep, and initially he thought this was a death knell from some terrible nightmare. He sat up against his pillows, waited for a moment, heard nothing more then burrowed down in the bed again to search for gentler dreams. The bell went again, for a long time, a threatening insistence: whoever it was, they were not about to leave. Denis imagined one or two hypotheses, glanced at the clock, which told him it was seven p.m., headed in the half-light toward the front door, and looked through the spyhole.
He did not recognize the person who went on ringing so insistently, filling him with exasperation: it was as if the entire human race were out there. He was going to have to tell this person that he did not belong anymore.
He trampled over the mail that had been shoved under his door, looked for the light switch, and his immediate reaction was to put on the door chain. The glaring landing light, on a timer, hurt his eyes. He brought his face into the doorframe, made gaunt with sleep and weight loss, covered with stubble.
A woman in a gray raincoat stood there, her arms crossed, a faint smile on her lips. They looked each other up and down for a moment then he emerged painfully from his speechlessness, while she remained motionless and silent. Denis felt obliged to call on the powers of speech sooner than he would have liked.
“Are you from the clinic?”
“The clinic?”
“They told me about some sort of psychological aid . . . Something like that . . . But I haven’t seen anyone . . . ”
Her only reply was to shake her head slowly, still smiling faintly.
“You’re not a shrink? Or anyone like that?”
“No, I haven’t been sent by the clinic.”
“Then you must be the social security? Checking up? I’m on long-term disability. You should have gotten my papers.”
“No, I’m not from the social security, either.”
“What do you want?”
“I’ve come to see you.”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“Do we know each other?”
“No. At least I don’t think so.”
“You’re some sort of social worker? Caregiver?”
“No.”
“Why don’t you stop telling me what you are not and instead tell me what you’re here for?”
“Do we have to stand here talking on the landing?”
“Listen . . . I’m not very well, I’m going back to bed. So either you tell me what you want or you leave me alone.”
“Just let me come in, what difference does it make?”
“I don’t know you!”
“What are you afraid of? Do I look dangerous?”
“Has someone sent you? Someone I know?”
“No, nobody. I don’t think t
here’s anyone we both know. So just let me in, why don’t you?”
“You think I go letting strangers into my house?”
“We would look less ridiculous.”
“Do I look ridiculous?”
“Frankly, with your head in the door chain, like an old lady . . . ”
Denis was nonplussed. The woman waited.
“You’re selling things door-to-door, is that it? Tell me outright, we’d waste less time.”
“A door-to-door salesman, me?”
“If that isn’t the case, then what’s that in your suitcase?”
“My belongings.”
Denis didn’t know what to say.
“Come on, open the door, otherwise someone will come out of the elevator and what will they think?”
“This is all getting absurd, I will have to ask you to leave me alone, and above all, don’t go ringing the bell again. Thank you.”
He slammed the door, irritated for a thousand reasons: he’d been disturbed while he was peacefully feeling depressed; she’d thrown herself on him like a bundle of dirty laundry; and, above all, she’d called him a little old lady—he had forgotten that human beings were such a dreadful species that one single specimen could be the source of several irritations at once, with boundless, stubborn determination. And, sure enough, the bell rang again right away.
After splashing his face with water, he drank a few sips of a flat drink, put on a bathrobe, then went back to open the door, careful to remove the door chain.
“I’m not well, I think you can tell that. So for the last time, either you tell me what you are doing outside my door, or I call the police.”
“The police? You’d go that far? No kidding, you would call the police?”
“That’s what you’re supposed to do in situations like this.”
Inwardly, he had to confess that situations like this tended to be rare.
“Go ahead, if it makes you feel better, but what do you think you’ll say to them?”
“You’re asking me that as if you intend to wait and find out.”
“I’m curious to hear you call. ‘There’s this girl outside my door, I don’t know what she wants but she’s won’t go away . . . ’”
“Am I mistaken or are you taking the piss out of me?”
“They’ll ask you to describe me, in case I’m some strung-out junkie, a delinquent, who knows. Above all, they’ll try to figure out how urgent it is, because I expect they have other fish to fry. ‘She’s wearing a raincoat, officer . . . ’”
But also a pair of old boots, half leather and half canvas, and a gray silk shawl all around her upper body.
“If I don’t open, will you stay there all evening?”
“If need be.”
What the—? thought Denis.
“Let me in. Oh, come on, it’s no big deal.”
“What have I done to you?”
“Nothing at all.”
“So what’s up? You don’t know where to go? You want some money?”
“Not at all!” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “Who do you take me for?”
“Put yourself in my position.”
“In your position, I would have already let me in. What do you have to lose?”
Of all the things she had said thus far, these were the words that gave Denis pause. His stiff carcass, curled up day and night at the bottom of a ravine, obliged to swallow blue, white and green things to chase away the pain of anxiety, his joyless self, the way he was these days, with neither energy nor illusions—did he have anything left to lose?
“Maybe I’m a little groggy but I can still tell when a situation is completely wacko. I am going to close this door, but first you are going to promise me that you won’t ring the bell anymore.”
She paused, then said half-heartedly, “I won’t ring anymore.”
“Thank you,” he said, gently closing the door.
On his way to the bedroom he met a repulsive creature, and recoiled. That indescribable thing—hairy, bent over, rickety, slovenly, had suddenly appeared between a cupboard door and the entrance to the bathroom. Before going to lie down he forced himself to confront the monster in question and face the mirror.
So this is what he had become?
Ashamed to behold this shadow of himself, Denis shouted, Would you look at yourself, for Christ’s sake! and lavished on his shadow enough scorn for all the scum on earth. He was tempted to shave, couldn’t find the strength, and went back to bed, shoving aside any shreds of pride the way you shove aside a chore. What miracle had stopped this odd girl from being afraid of that?
He nestled into his blankets, glad to be left alone at last. Indignation, shame, anger, too many feelings all at once for a sick man who was still a long way from convalescence. Never mind if that weird girl left with her mystery intact; for certain phenomena here on earth there were no rational explanations, as Denis was paying dearly to find out.
He groped across his night table, grabbed a tube, and swallowed several tablets before the usual time. He’d been disturbed in his retreat, he was still all feverish, it would take him a while to forget. He had thrown in the towel: why was someone coming to bug him? He used to feel so good on the planet, he used to make sure there was plenty of room for fantasy, he had loved his life and dared to say as much—so why him? Now he had to thank God for making him mortal.
What did the girl look like again? Shoulder-length hair, light brown it seemed, and then? And then nothing, an ordinary face, a figure in a raincoat, an insignificant character of the kind you meet in droves whenever you’re unwise enough to leave your bed.
Denis dozed off for a too-brief moment, then opened his eyes wide, filled with doubt. What if that insignificant person hadn’t taken her mystery away with her?
He left his bed again, rushed to the door, looked through the spyhole: she was still silhouetted against the darkness on the landing.
“You’re going to give me problems with the neighbors.”
“What do you mean, I just talked to a very nice lady, on the right here, she didn’t seem at all surprised to find me waiting. She said, ‘He must be asleep, he takes a lot of medication.’”
Denis stared at her wordlessly.
“Having said that, I’d give anything to sit down for a sec and drink a big glass of water.”
“Are you joking?”
“That’s all I want.”
“Who the fuck are you?”
“Marie-Jeanne Pereyres,” she said, rummaging in her handbag.
She handed him her ID card. Height: 5’6”. Place of birth: Bois-le-Roi (Seine-et-Marne). On the picture, her hair was slightly longer and she was wearing round glasses. Give or take a year or two, she was the same age as Denis.
If his antidepressants and anxiolytics had not inhibited his fear reflex, Denis would have wondered whether he was being smitten with a misfortune worse than his depression. This strange person might have come to tell him as much: he had to find out once and for all.
“So let’s suppose I let you sit here for a minute, will you finally tell me what you want?”
“Yes.”
At last she was allowed through the door, so she put her suitcase in the hallway and went on to discover a tiny, neglected space, furnished with an old sofa and a little console covered with various small boxes and containers.
“May I switch on the light?” she asked, while he ran a glass under the faucet.
Not waiting for his reply, she turned on the light, sat down at last, and gave a sigh of relief, massaging her ankles. She drank the water all in one go and thanked him with a smile. He cleared away the things that were scattered across the table and moved a few things into the hallway, restoring a semblance of tidiness.
“Don’t bother for my sake,” she said, unbuttoning her raincoat.
“Keep your coat on and tell me what it is you want so we can get this over with.”
Avoiding his gaze, she hesitated for a moment. But as she had committed to a reply, she was trying to find the fairest, least threatening way to put it. In the end she chose the simplest.
“I want to stay.”
“Pardon?”
“I want to stay.”
“What do you mean by stay? Stay here? At my place?”
“Yes, here. I don’t take up much room.”
“You are telling me that you barged in here to move in? That this is some sort of nightmare I’m having here?”
“Don’t get upset. That heavy medication you’re taking is probably affecting your judgment.”
Drained of his last remaining strength, Denis had to sit down next to her for a moment. The heavy medication was playing tricks on him. He must have made a mistake with the dosage, he must have confused the blue tablets with the white ones, must have taken too many green ones, he was already asleep and the nightmare would fade away as soon as he woke up. And yet the creature did seem to be made of flesh and blood.
“Before I throw you out of here on your ear, heavy medication or no heavy medication, I’ll give you one last chance to tell me what you mean by ‘stay.’”
“This living room is enough. I can sleep on the sofa. I won’t make any noise, I read a lot. Once a day for the bathroom will be fine. I can eat out.”
Suddenly Denis’s affliction was mingled with sadness, and the sadness brought on so many other emotions, all contradictory, all too violent for a man who was so weary. He could not restrain a sudden onrush of tears, and he began to sob and weep, like a child who is overwhelmed by the injustice of the world.
After what seemed like an eternity he dried his tears on the handkerchief she held out to him. He let out a long sigh of exhaustion.
“I’m going back to bed,” he said, almost gently. “I’m sick. I’m tired. I am going to sleep for a very long time. Tomorrow, when I get up, make sure you’re gone.”