Life, it seemed, had it in for her. Here I was, a man who'd lived alone forever, making do with affairs that ended the morning after, and I had to go and meet Delia! Delia was passionate. She was passion itself. Fierce, fearless, fervent in everything she did. Someone else might've deserved her more, and been better equipped to brave such a human tornado. But through some divine unfairness I'll never be thankful enough for, she chose me. Before her, my life was stale and musty.
I hadn't felt the need to tell Delia there was a teenaged female mummy in my life, more or less alive to boot. She found out by accident, even if that accident was inevitable. We'd been lovers for a few months already. We almost always wound up at her place. It was more convenient, especially because of the size of her bed. So she'd only been to my place two or three times, and had never spent the night there, when a metro strike forced her to stay over. I'd already shown her my instrument collection before, neglecting of course to open up the double bass case. I'd stashed the double-bass itself in a closet. Since I'd started dating Delia, I rarely slept at home. I felt a vague remorse at the thought of all those nights when Gaud woke up and found no one to open the lid and keep her company. I settled this remorse by telling myself that she hadn't ever brought it up. That either meant she hadn't noticed, or that she forgot any hypothetical grief my absence caused her. At any rate, while Delia and I lay entwined on my narrow couch, the Breton lament sounded in the silence.
"Good God, what's that?"
"Don't be scared." I said, "It's Just Gaud."
I opened the case. Delia and Gaud studied each other with clear mutual loathing. Could they have been friends or allies? Perhaps in each encounter there's a moment-a split second-when our feelings might go either way. Perhaps the only difference between love and hate is chance. Weren't Delia and Gaud complementary? Together, with one's perfect body and the other's sublime eyes, they could have made the ideal woman. But this miracle failed to happen.
They never spoke to each other directly. Gaud ignored Delia, and Delia pretended to see her as nothing but an anatomical curiosity. Though Gaud sang and spoke, Delia considered her no more sentient than she would a mynah bird. At least in theory, for she never missed an opportunity to humiliate her. Right in front of Gaud, she advised me to let her go because "it wasn't sanitary" I pointed out in vain that Gaud was in fact very sanitary, and when she wasn't needed only a little dusting or occasional vacuuming. A few weeks later, Delia tried another approach. It was not only "unclean," but "dangerous," too. From then on, whenever she found herself alone and free to move about, Gaud played pranks, big and little. She might try to vandalize the apartment in some way within her paltry means, like knocking over a vase or making a minor mess. Reshelving the books exceeded her strength. But she might also leave the gas on, or slit her wrists. The incident with the gas didn't lead anywhere, thanks to the firemen's intervention. Nor did slitting her wrists: nothing flowed out. I kept the box cutter she'd used under lock and key, and put a bolt on the kitchen door, thus keeping her from reaching the gas, any sharp objects, and above all any potentially dangerous sources of heat.
Life went on-an odd life, I'll admit. What Delia and I had shared at the outset of our relationship was ruined. Where she once gave herself to me without restraint, she now refused two out of three times. The woman who'd once seemed so well-balanced and optimistic to me now often seemed willfully sullen or aggressive. For my part-torn between what I owed my mistress and the feeling of responsibility for Gaud that I couldn't quite shake-I was getting gloomy. As for Gaud, well, if a mummy could waste away, it was clear she was also feeling the effects of the situation. We were all unhappy.
All this led us to a vacation. I didn't usually take one. I hate beaches and sunburn. Delia didn't see it that way. She wanted to go to the shore with me. I surrendered on one condition, and remained firm about it: Gaud was going with us. Leaving her alone for a month was out of the question; you couldn't ask the super to look after a mummy the way you would a canary. In truth, I'd long planned to take Gaud back to the Brittany of her childhood. The name of the little fishing village where she'd been born floated to her lips like a cork plucked from a net and tossed ashore by waves. I kept the idea of the pilgrimage to myself. I made sure Gaud knew nothing about it. And as for Delia, who'd reluctantly given in to being burdened with her rival-it was pointless to tell her.
We left one morning in July, in Delia's car. She was at the wheel, with me beside her, and Gaud in the backseat, in her case. Delia didn't say a word the whole way. She'd given in. The vacation she'd dreamed of for so long was ruined in advance. She was determined to make me pay dearly. There was nothing but rain and wind en route.
I'd rented a house in the back country, a few kilometers from the village where Gaud was born. The wet summer made me dig deep into the woodshed. I kept a fire crackling in the hearth in the main room. Unable to swim or sunbathe, Delia was always going out for walks through the waterlogged moors. Never one for slogging through mud, I staved and worked by the fire. Delia would come back with her nose dripping, smelling of moist earth and the heath. If I offered to warm her up as only I could, she'd turn me down and glare at the case leaning against the wall, across from the bed.
One morning neither more nor less disastrous than the others, I put my plan into action. I'd seen Delia head off in the opposite direction from the village. I carried Gaud's case to the car. Since our arrival the mummy had only stirred from her torpor twice, and quite briefly. I was guessing she had no idea where we were.
A little ways from the village, I turned down a dirt road leading to the sea. The nonstop drizzle had discouraged most visitors. The rare figure stuffed into a jacket, bright yellow or fluorescent pink against the seaweed, punctuated the shore and the exposed rocks.
I parked at the edge of the dunes and got the case from the car. I'd never woken Gaud before. I opened the lid and whispered, "Gaud! Gaud! Wake up! Look where we are."
Her eyes were always open, even when she was asleep. Her nose and lips quivered, telling me she was awake. When she saw the sky and felt the drizzle on her cheeks, she knew, even before she'd climbed out of her shell and looked around.
"You brought me back?"
"Yes. I thought-" In heaven's name, what exactly had I thought?
"Help me."
I obeyed. She crawled from the case and stood up on her wobbly legs.
"Hold me up."
In my study, she'd never taken more than a few steps before, leaning on my arm.
Despite the dull gray sky, it was still too bright out for her. She held one hand up to shield the masterpiece of Leonello Guardicci.
"It was over there!"
With her free hand, she pointed at the slate roofs and the slanting, motionless masts of boats on the beach. Over there, under one of those roofs, she'd had a life, or a childhood, at least. Voices, smells, emotions connected her to one of those houses by a thread perhaps indestructible, or perhaps ready to be severed at last, this time for good.
"Do you want to go down there?"
"No. I know there are people I loved down there, but… I no longer know who they are. It's better that way. Walking, feeling the rain and wind on my face-this is enough. Help me."
She weighed nothing. Her feet barely left prints in the wet sand. We covered about fifty yards. At one point I loosened my grip on her arm for a second, and I thought the wind was about to blow her away.