ONE
It’s a very vague recollection, a haze of a memory. You’re talking, standing in the middle of the huge foyer in an apartment on the Left Bank. I say “you,” but that’s absurd because I don’t yet know that you are you. The people who will play a part in our lives are always strangers the day before we meet them, and writing it has less to do with naïveté than wonderment.
You’re talking about incest and rape. Your eyes reveal a rare vivaciousness, your voice has a penetrating lilting quality, your diction is precise, confident, I detect an urgency in your quick-fire delivery that is not related to the subject but to the way you are. The clothes you’re wearing seem to float over you. Your hair skims your shoulders. I don’t look at you much, only because I so desperately want to look at you. I don’t want my eagerness to betray my growing desire, I don’t want my too obvious attention to embarrass you. Even now, I regret those first minutes when I didn’t allow myself to grasp you more fully, see you more clearly.
TWO
You may remember this better than me. We’re having tagliatelle al pesto ligure for dinner in that Italian restaurant on the rue Mazarine, surrounded by people I know nothing about. We don’t know each other, I’m drawn to you, aroused by you. If you had not followed us there for dinner, I would have gone home.
We’re talking about the Holocaust, the camps, Belzec, and it’s more than I can take, I can’t hide the tears in my eyes; later you will tell me you found that moving. You suddenly say these words: “my husband, my children.” I think: obviously. A woman like you couldn’t not have ties. The distress I feel when you indicate that nothing is possible lays me bare, it tells me how lonely I’ve always been, without you. A self-evident fact comes to light: I’m no longer in any doubt that you are a woman for me.
You’re the one who will use the word “thunderbolt.” But later, in a profile published in the periodical Quinzaine, when the journalist asks me the ten key dates in my life, my last milestone will be: “September this year. Struck by a thunderbolt.”
THREE
Let’s say this right away, there will be no chronology, no true logic, and definitely no hierarchy. The last memory described will simply be the last. It will just be the face of a die showing when it has stopped rolling, because every die thrown eventually stops rolling. As far as this third memory is concerned, it isn’t in its rightful place, but who cares.
It’s an autumn evening, you drop by my apartment toward the end of the afternoon, and bring some pastries for the three of us, because my daughter is with me: an apple tart, a pear tart, and a custard tart. You have split the three pastries and you’re eating the filling, leaving the crust and bottom. I point out to my daughter that she mustn’t behave like that if she’s invited to someone’s house. You burst out laughing: you’ve just realized that you’ve “made yourself at home.”
You’re no longer visiting.
FOUR
We’re naked in bed, lying beneath the sheets. You’re listing things you like: going under bridges, looking down over open countryside, scouring your mind to find the exact word for something, feeling the men you love looking at you … You haven’t mentioned “buying clothes.” I remind you of this one; you’re amazed not to have thought of it. I wanted to remember everything: you also like to have a very soft light on when you sleep alone at night, old churches, being wanted and being taken, and quattrocento art. In no particular order.
FIVE
You’re asleep. You’re lying on your back with your knees together, legs bent and feet splayed. The whole arrangement forms a very stable pyramid that I can’t push over. There’s a draft under the duvet and it’s not warming up. No one can sleep in that position. And yet you’re asleep, fast asleep, no chance of getting you to move an inch. The following morning you won’t believe me, obviously.
SIX
It’s a telephone conversation. We will have a thousand of them, and that’s not much of an exaggeration. This one is about the five hundredth.
The train is cutting across the Moran region, I’m drinking coffee in the restaurant car, watching the undulating fields scud past. I hear you say: “I was thinking, for our wedding I’ll wear a red dress.” I will wear, not I would, I can feel the difference. If you’re picturing your clothes then it’s really serious. For the next ten minutes we talk about the ceremony, the venue, the guests, the musicians, I know you’re joking, I also know that you’re enjoying the game, that it gives you a right to project us into the taboo that a union between us would represent.
From time to time, the train passes a village. I spot a church tower, there is probably also a register office, but almost certainly no synagogue.
SEVEN
One more round on the carousel at the Jardin des Plantes and your little girl climbs down from the wooden horse. Lea hasn’t succeeded in hooking the pink pompom, despite the best efforts of the woman in the booth: a redheaded child — in a better position and more competitive — managed to get it before her every time. We sit at a table by the refreshment stand, two coffees, one hot chocolate. Lea has forgotten her scooter and you have to go and get it, so she and I are left facing each other, watching each other in silence, me rather cautiously looking down, she mischievously peering up.
It’s the first time we’ve met properly. I think she looks like you, despite her blond hair and blue eyes. You come back over, and we head toward the largest conservatory. All of a sudden, Lea sneaks in between the two of us. She takes your hand and then, by surprise, mine, and starts swinging between us. With that one gesture, your little girl is giving me permission to exist, and her tiny hand is offering me a position that it alone has any right to grant.
We go down the steps into the conservatory, with Lea between us skipping and laughing. Thanks to her, we are side by side for the first time.
EIGHT
I heard the water running, secretly opened the door to the bathroom, and now I’m watching you. You’re naked, taking a shower. Mind you, one of your friends has given you a piece of unfaithful woman’s advice: “Never smell of soap when you go home in the evening.” Under the circumstances, it’s difficult to do without it, but at least let’s make sure it’s the same soap as usual. I have bought myself some. You arch your back, avoiding getting your hair wet so there is no moisture on it to give you away. Your buttock shadows into a dimple I have never seen before, your smooth skin forms goose bumps in the cold, your nipples are still erect.
You will tell me, later, that you like very hot showers, or very cold ones, showers that produce a burning sensation. The window behind you looks out over the city, its lights coming on as night falls. You’re not aware of me watching you; soon you will turn, will be surprised, and, delighted, you will smile at me.
NINE
We’re walking down the hill on the rue du Chevalier de la Barre (1743–1760). I have my arm around your waist and you’ve allowed me to, even though Paris may be full of all these “people you know,” which means that from the Place de la Concorde to the Marais I’m not allowed to kiss you. But, in the middle of the street, you take my hand and put it on your ass, spontaneous and provocative in equal measures. My hand seems happy with the arrangement, and so does your ass. I immediately want you. One day you will formulate a sentence referring to, if I remember, “the role played by desire in the corpus of our relationship,” and I will smile. For now, I like feeling your buttocks moving beneath my hand.