Her first letter: It’s from René Char. It’s for you: Push your luck, seize your happiness, and take risks. After seeing you, they will get used to you. The second: The air I always feel almost lacking in most human beings, if it blows through you, has a profusion and a sparkling ease. I live marvelously with you. That is our extraordinary luck. Twenty after twelve. I have before me the letter from Africa, Guibert’s book, the magazine Eurêka, Libération on Viagra, her father’s notebooks, the animal clones, the telephone. She didn’t call me this morning. I’m exhausted. I was asleep. Léonore woke me. At the door, knock knock. No Marie. I’m alone. A photographer just called me, he wants me to write something, to accompany photographs of goals in football matches. And also: Of course I’m moved when I think of you when I see you, of course the idea of not seeing you not holding you in my arms not making love with you anymore is unbearable. Your absence, this solitude in which you’re with me despite it all is a strange kind of test I’d like so much to be able just to be near you to have you in my life For the first time I truly feel the absence Suffering is hard it’s necessary Maybe I’ll lose everything I’ll lose you I don’t know I think about you way too much I think about you almost all the time Kisses. I don’t want to call her. That feeling has evaporated. Yesterday, before he left, Claude said, it’s only with you that I feel energized like this. What do you mean? I can’t explain, energized. I want to do things with you, feel these surges with you. Not just to pass the time, energized, exhilarated, I really want to. I didn’t feel energized at all. I didn’t feel like going to the cinema, to a restaurant, on a trip, or on vacation. No particular desire to do anything together, no particular exhilaration with her. And yet the test results were positive. Her breasts were small, but still they were hers. It fascinated me. I pictured her with other women. I wasn’t jealous, women touching each other fascinated me. She was standing in a field that was mown very short. She’d had the dream in New York. Her father was with her. The field was very flat, the grass cut very short. Maximum visibility. And yet, you could hear hunters, shots. Unbelievable, that hunters would dare shoot in a space that was so open, with such visibility, leaving the animal no chance. Yes, they would. A little deer arrives. Its eyes are both calm and terrified. She sees it, she says to her father: It’s not possible. The hunters won’t shoot. But they do, not only that, but they shoot it in the ear, such a fragile spot. The little deer, calm and terrified. I was the calm and terrified little deer, of course, or else she was. Writing that, I recapture our love. I love her. I’m going to call her. I dream. A house, the two of us. Two storeys. Léonore is there. It’s all fine. I write. She leaves for work. She comes home, I’m there. I go to pick Léonore up from school. Except for Thursdays, Thursdays she goes, she takes her to shore with Baya. The two of them throw pebbles into the sea. Baya looks for them in the water. Oh! no, she’s not cold. Look at all her fur. I’m not homosexual. I was for three months. I thought I was condemned to be homosexual. I really was caught. But I refused to sleep at her place. In that house full of animals. With a pool. When you think of all the ways to live, it’s also amazing you don’t die. Swimming in the pool. Taking a bath. Nine o’clock, taking a shower. Deciding on May 8th “I’m not going to wash today.” Or telephoning, crying, waiting, making the restaurant reservation for tonight, feeling a bit bored, waiting for friends to go on a picnic (not me), it’s a gray day, it will clear. Feeling energized, listening to music. Coughing, feeling low. Doing errands in the morning, all the stores will be closed in the afternoon. Getting a hard-on, making love. Masturbating, pissing, feeling deflated, thinking about something, crying, returning from Africa. Reading. Not loving. Feeling bored. Seeing your daughter again. Waiting for me. Waiting for my call. Not calling. Knowing I’ll end up doing it. Maybe not. This time. Maybe not right away. Letting me take my time. Turning me over. Maybe I’m writing. Maybe I’m with someone. Seeing us from the window across the street while watering the bonsai plants. Leaving for London, asking a friend, Claude, for example, to water the bonsais while I live across the street. Unlocking the house. Yelling in the street. Like last night. Someone did, for at least two hours. Saying to yourself, it’s noon, she said we’d eat together. Waiting for me to call. Knowing I will. She’ll call. I called. There were women in the camps for deported homosexuals. Classical music was playing over the speakers. The SS stripped Jo. They shove a pail onto her head. Brunette, breasts bared, her slender hips, her torso, her neck with her thin gold necklace. The cosmetics of her gaze. The kohl is running. A tinplate bucket. They sic the guard dogs on her. She thinks of Baya, the dog she adored. Pitou my heart. The dogs barking around her. My darling What I’d like most is to be able to live close to you With you, you for me and me for you, with other close friends, intimate friends sometimes, to live and create a space for us. I dream. We choose things we love. Pitou my heart watches over her. More and more often, I find myself saying us for you and me, thinking of you when I picture the time to come, life, the future I love you you know don’t forget it Let’s be together. I just called her. It was busy, there was the click of call waiting. She didn’t take the call. I called back. She still didn’t answer. I called again, it rang, then the answering machine. I left the following message: What’s going on? I call you, it’s busy, you don’t take call waiting. I call back, I get the answering machine. What are you doing? Maybe she took Baya out for a walk right after hanging up. I doubt it, I called back right away. Maybe she decided she didn’t ever want to hear my voice again after such a night. Last night on the phone “I’m suffering” and “I’m so unhappy, leave me alone.” Then I reversed, we ended the call saying we’d see each other tomorrow, in other words, today. Maybe she changed her mind again over night. Yesterday I’d decided to break up, definitively this time. No, I wasn’t sure I really wanted her to go to Avignon with me. Much less to Paris next month. In fact, we may never see each other again. Ever. I sensed sobs in her voice and backtracked. When she said “you had me convinced of things, I believed in…” I was touched, “in love…,” “a few days ago you told me you would always love me and that you’d never forget how I am with you, all I do for you, but no, you have to take off.” We’d already broken up in February. I told her “I need to be alone.” She replied “me too.” At night, Léonore was in bed. I called her, I shouldn’t have. The conversation derailed, things went south again. Then I watched