TEN
It’s just a desk, straight lines, a modern feel dating from the sixties. There it is, abandoned on the sidewalk on the rue des Abbesses. You really like it, so do I. You love hunting around for antiques, I thought you would. You decide to take it and go to get your car; we have some trouble putting it into the trunk. You’re planning to paint the steel feet red. Or black. I agree. Where will it live? With you, in Paris or Burgundy, or, one day, with us? That last option gets my vote. Either way, it’s our first piece of furniture. Wherever it lives its desk life, it will bring you back to memories of us.
ELEVEN
I also have memories of you that don’t include you, memories of the two of us that you won’t know about at all. Where you are such a strong presence in me that your absence is almost imperceptible. It’s the imprint of you on the sand of me, the silent melody that your existence leaves in me. In one of these memories, I’m walking along the cloisters of an abbey, sheltered from the rain by a Roman vaulted ceiling. I sit down on some stone stairs, surrounded by the sound of footsteps, voices, children calling. All I can think of is you. The day before, I held you in my arms for the first time, and you’ve invaded me already. Sentences about you come to me, and I write them down, with no clear intention yet. Legend would have it that a piece of shrapnel lodged in Shostakovich’s brain meant that, if he tilted his head a particular way, he could hear unknown pieces of music. You are my Shostakovich’s shrapnel. Shostakovich’s Shrapnel would make a good title for a novel. Life is full of good titles for novels.
TWELVE
I know the exact place. I could trace the outline of your feet and mine with white chalk, the way a forensic scientist draws a line around the body at a crime scene, or a dance teacher makes diagrams of basic dance positions. It’s here, in the kitchen, between the refrigerator and the wooden table. You’re in my apartment for the first time, you’re walking ahead of me and you suddenly stop. It’s so obvious that I should take you in my arms. Besides, I am walking so close behind you that, if I don’t, I’ll run into you. I put my arms around you, my chest touches your back, my mouth reaches for the back of your neck, you turn in my arms and we kiss.
One day, I’ll draw those marks on the floor tiles. They’ll prove to you that you’re not a mermaid, because mermaids don’t have feet.
THIRTEEN
You’re succumbing to tiredness, your breathing’s getting quieter, your eyes closing in the warm bed. You suddenly start talking about tobacco pouches. What you’re saying is incoherent, but even so I try to make some sense of it (I know the people close to you who do have tobacco tins); I’ve forgotten what I said to you, but you use the words “tin” and “red paper,” your words growing less distinct. I haven’t grasped that you’re already asleep, haven’t yet discovered that, of all the threads connecting you to the conscious world, speech is the most enduring, the one you consent to relinquish only after you have sunk into sleep.
FOURTEEN
Without thinking what you’re doing, and not even aware you’re doing it, I think, you put your hand firmly against my temple and force my head down onto the sheet. Either way, it’s clear that you want to use me to your own ends. I’m surprised at first, so surprised that my neck — which is as amazed as the rest of me — resists for a moment before giving in to your invitation. Then I laugh, and so do you, about the intimacy between our bodies over which we have no control.
FIFTEEN
You drag me into a clothing store, opposite the pretty Enfants-Rouges market on the rue de Bretagne. It’s the first time. I’ve not yet gauged how important jewelry and fabrics are to you. You go into the boutique with all the confidence and simplicity of a regular, fingering dresses and tops, asking my opinion, which I give. The prices seem high but I’m far from informed: in the months to come, I will learn a lot. You slip into a fitting room to try on a denim dress, through the gap in the white canvas drapes I glimpse your hips and red lace panties. I don’t know you well enough yet to risk popping my head in and gazing at you almost naked. But just for the time it takes you to try on a dress, I like being the man beside you in life: I think the hat fits me pretty well.
SIXTEEN
The telephone rings, and it’s you. Your breasts are “enormous,” that’s the word you use, because you’re pregnant, you’re in absolutely no doubt: “I know my body,” you say, unequivocally. I’m at Roissy airport, about to board for Berlin, and, given that I believe in this pregnancy and feel no shred of fear at the prospect, I see something clearly: I want a life with you. You hang up and there I am, for a few hours, the potential father of a little Sarah or a little, now what would it be, Jude?
And, in spite of the inevitable drama, the tears to come and the heartache, do you know what? I’m happy.
SEVENTEEN
“Do you know what?” That’s your phrase. A relic from adolescence that you haven’t shaken off, a linguistic weakness I find touching. What do you use it for, what role does it play in the way you speak? Is it a pause you allow yourself to give you a better chance to formulate an idea that comes to you? I take the question seriously every time, I answer no, quietly, which is my own discreet way of saying how interested I am in you, and how much I care too.
EIGHTEEN
It’s already dark on the rue de Grenelle, you’re back with your children. But, so that I don’t have to leave you quite yet, I’m following the three of you around Monoprix, with no valid excuse.
Karl and Lea are energetically maneuvering between the aisles with their mini shopping carts decked out with flags. On your instructions, they pile up cornflakes, sugar, yogurts … For their sakes, you transform the chore of shopping into an exciting game, a treasure hunt. I briefly interpret this frenzy as your fear that life might stop being a party, as if you owed it — to yourself and your children — to be a fairy.
A fragile side of you emerges from this feverish activity as an attentive wife and mother, and I find it touching, it bowls me over. I restrain my mounting urge to take the kindly sorceress in my arms, and protect her from the demons of routine and boredom.
NINETEEN
You think you know how to go about catching me. You do. But how can I describe my desire, the way my hands thirst for your skin, my lips for yours? There’s no point describing what we do, choosing one thing among a thousand. That’s what I’m doing here.
Our nakedness, side by side. I like looking at you naked, you like me looking at you. You’re lying on your stomach, desirable, offered up, but a man’s body doesn’t always obey him so readily; and you may deny it, but that is something you definitely regret.
I am sitting on the bed looking at your nakedness, when your buttocks turn and rise up toward me, their every curve wanting to arouse me, their soft, soft skin intended just for me. You smile, and this gesture gets the better of me, I’m gripped by desire, you are mine and I take you.
TWENTY
It’s very late, you have to go: your husband is on duty, the children with their grandparents, but your guilt won’t let you sleep at my apartment, it persuades you to go home.
It’s winter, the weather’s cold. As usual, I walk you to your car, expecting to accompany you to your neighborhood and come back by taxi afterward. It’s a ritual we have, a way of stealing another half hour from the time we don’t have together. We’re getting close to the Renault, I see you stop dead in your tracks. There’s a man sitting in the driver’s seat, sound asleep. You’re petrified, unable to make a single move. I knock on the window, in vain, I open the door, pat the man on the shoulder gently, then more insistently. He wakes, with some difficulty, and I ask him, not unkindly, to get out of the car.