“What’s all this muttering, Judith?” Louise asked.
Judith ran ahead, laughing, she turned to look at her big sister as she started crossing the road. Thomas was the one who saw it coming. He reached out his arm, grabbed the child, and hauled her back. He apologizes to her for squeezing her arm so hard. He hurt her, she gives him a hard time. She’s going to have a bruise. The driver has gone to get the doll, has extricated the stroller. It falls apart, is irreparable.
“What’s your name, sweetheart? I’ll buy you a new one.”
Thomas says there is no need, walks him back to the van.
They were meant to go to the Evolution Gallery at the Jardin des Plantes. Louise is completely drained, she just wants to sit down, have a coffee. Thomas asks the girls what they would like. Hot chocolate. Now, that’s a good idea. Four hot chocolates.
“Thomas saved your life,” Maud tells her sister. Marveling at the enormity of her words, she says them again: “Thomas saved your life.”
“What does that mean, mommy, saved my life?” Judith asks her mother.
Louise does not answer. She is hugging her daughter, suffocating her. She looks up at Thomas, closes her eyes, tears glistening beneath her eyelids.
Thomas drinks his hot chocolate slowly. Judith and Maud play with their spoons and the cocoa left in their cups. The fear is forgotten, for a moment. But the terror is gradually working its way through Louise. Thomas can almost read her agitated thoughts. What if Judith had died? She would have left him, most likely. Pain destroys desire, no love could survive guilt like that. She could only have coped with the shared suffering with Judith’s father, in fact she would only have wanted to try and overcome it with him.
“Thank you,” Louise says eventually.
Thomas shakes his head. In these few minutes of his life, he can see a fork in his own destiny. That was the word Anna used in her last session, when she said, “I don’t know whether Yves is my destiny.” Coming from Anna, the word was ambiguous, somewhere between freedom of choice and the inevitability of fate.
Thomas does not believe in fate. He would have the power of speech and actions shape our lives. To him, that is the point of psychoanalysis, giving the analysand the strength to become the driving force in his or her own life. If the accident just now had actually happened, he likes to think that, against all the odds, he would have known how to play it right, to become one of the people Louise would lean on.
As a teenager, he had endless discussions about the elasticity of individual fates and History (with a capital H, as Perec used to say). The budding Marxist confronted trainee Hegelians. If Hitler had died in a car crash in 1931, would some inertia in the powers that be have doggedly set the war and the Holocaust back on track? Was Stalinism conceivable with a different Stalin? Who could have replaced Trotsky?
Other questions hover. Where did he stand in Louise’s story? Did a lover have to turn up at this particular point in her life? Was he interchangeable? Thomas has no idea. He doubts there is some hidden agenda. A breakup has not already happened before the meeting occurs. There are more chance events and contingencies than necessities. Of course, in an ecosystem, occupying the same niche requires the same response: all large marine predators are alike, sharks for the fish, killer whales for mammals, plesiosaurs for dinosaurs. But man is not the natural world, history is not evolution, and Thomas has stopped trying to find a material or scientific answer to a question that could never be either of these. He will never know whether he or Hitler was replaceable, ersetzbar. Suffice to say, life never serves up the same dish twice.
Judith and Maud have finished their hot chocolate. They want to go home. So does Louise. They can go and see the thousands of butterflies and the big white whale another time. Louise opens the door to the apartment building, the girls run upstairs. Louise turns to Thomas.
“If Judith had … I wouldn’t have had the strength for anything, you know. I couldn’t have gone on. My life would have stopped.”
“No,” Thomas says. “No. That’s the worst thing, it wouldn’t have stopped.”
ANNA
• •
Incomplete list of Anna’s purchases.
(from September 8 through December 21, 2008)
One silk dress, size 6, zipper to the side, pleated below the belt, silvery beige, 129 euros.
One pair of pumps in brown faux crocodile leather, size 8, low heel, 79 euros.
One tunic in embroidered cotton, size S, beige and emerald, fastened at the neck, V-neck, embroidery along the neckline and below the bust, flared below the bust, 49 euros.
One black cotton dress, size small, with Navajos pattern, short buttoned sleeves, A-line, 99 euros.
One cotton blouse, size 8, opalescent color, slightly fitted, open pointed collar, sale price 55 euros.
One pair of low-waist jeans, W27 L34, bleached Genoa blue, straight leg, five diagonal-cut pockets including one coin pocket, with leather belt, 89 euros.
One pair of ballet pumps, taupe, small blue tulip on the edging, size 8, 69 euros.
Two silk and polyamide bras, 34B, one in mouse gray and one in bright red with white lace pattern, push-up style with underwiring, hook-and-eye fastening, adjustable straps, 34 euros. Two pairs of “boyshort” underwear in embroidered silk and polyamide tulle, size 8, one in mouse gray and one in bright red, embroidered waistband, 28 euros.
One trench coat, black shot with green, two internal buttons, one belt, wide black leather lapels, size medium, 249 euros.
One pair of black leather sandals, with jeweled ring effect over big toe, two-inch heel, tie-straps at the ankle, size 8, 55 euros.
One one-piece swimsuit, size 8, watermelon pink, deep V-neck with tie at the bust, 49 euros.
One black cotton T-shirt with embroidered neckline, and Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal screen print, 15 euros.
Two pairs of underwear in embroidered tulle (one black, one gray-beige), size 6, 66 % polyamide, 25 % polyester, 9 % elastane, embroidered waistband, 38 euros. Two bras (one black, one gray-beige), 34B, 60 % polyamide, 35 % polyester, 5 % elastane, embroidered, 48 euros.
One pair of taupe-colored, ruched leather boots, round toe, narrow leg, coming high up the leg with diagonal top line, slipon, size 8, 219 euros.
One chocolate-colored cotton jacket, size 6, single-button fastening, long sleeves, piped pockets, navy blue leather shoulder panels, 99 euros.
One pair of red suede moccasins, white overstitching at the front, low heel, size 8, 39 euros.
One denim skirt, 100 % cotton, size small, chalk color, button fastening, zip fly, patch pockets to the side with buttoned flap, small slit to front and back, 59 euros.
One short, low-cut dress in blue cotton, with flounce in navy blue tulle, size 6, 119 euros.
ANNA AND YVES
• •
IT IS NIGHTFALL. Anna cannot bring herself to leave. She rests her head on Yves’s shoulder, thoughtful.
“My darling goy.”
Yves knows full well that Anna calls her husband “my darling.” He recognizes the tenderness beneath the irony.
“Do you know what?”
This “Do you know what?” makes Yves smile. It is very often the pattern that sets off Anna’s questioning. He answers every time without sounding tired of it: “No, Anna, I don’t know what. Tell me.”
“You also like me because I’m Jewish.” Yves is about to think this is a ridiculous comment, but she adds: “You would have liked to be Jewish.”