Contrary to all expectations, it was a tender moment.
One of those rare moments when you take the time to think about what is all right, and what isn’t all right, and what could change, and what should change: you see the paths forming, and how to make your way past the swampy terrain.
The breakup was definite but I went to bed feeling calmer; I had packed my bag and was ready to go. The next morning I would leave a note on the night table or, if by chance Philippe had come back, I would place my hand on his forehead and say, “No hard feelings. See you around.” Unless. Then we’d have to see. Lay down conditions. Nothing like this, ever again.
I fell asleep in that state of mind.
The window was open, and I was in harmony with the city. Noise, fatigue, but also a tremendous desire for change. A desire to become someone else. Someone good. Or at least respected. The process had begun. It should have gone on naturally, taken its course in the months and years to come. In fact, the birth went very quickly.
And the obstetrician ruined everything.
I can feel my lips tightening with the first signs of the outskirts of Paris.
This is where I live now, the outskirts of Paris, along with hundreds of thousands of other people. But I am not an ant. I know what I want. And above all I know what I don’t want.
You, Philippe.
I don’t want anything to do with you.
~ ~ ~
Memories overlapping.
What an exhausting trip.
I didn’t need this.
The one thing I dream of, when we get to Paris, would be to find a hotel and sleep in an anonymous, comfortable room, where nobody would want anything from me. I would take the exit behind the Gare de l’Est, the one no one uses — Château-Landon — and book the first available room at the All Seasons, the elevator would be full of Japanese tourists out for a good time, and I would collapse on the bed. And when I woke up I’d be another person.
I really would like to be another person.
I’ve always wanted to be another person. Less disciplined. More intelligent. Brilliant. A meteor. Someone you see whiz by in the sky and you talk about them to your kids years later, all starry-eyed. Someone like Mathieu Coché. And yet it’s strange, when we were teenagers, you would never have expected anything like it. Mathieu was sort of my sparring partner. The guy who comes along with you to auditions to read you your lines, but who never gets chosen. I don’t know what made the difference. Adversity, perhaps. Nothing was easy for him back then, whereas for me, everything just landed in my lap — love, friendship, sex, it was all dead simple. Cécile Duffaut was actually the first girl who ever left me. How could she have done anything else?
I was unbearable.
I remember the end, in London. Don’t think I don’t. You might think you’ve forgotten everything, but that would be blatant hypocrisy. In fact, I’m convinced that people’s ability to remember is much better than they claim.
I wandered around, it was late afternoon. At first I was glad to be alone. At that age it’s hard to explain to the person you’re with that you might need solitude, that you don’t want to be glued to them twenty-four hours a day. This was the first time we’d been together for whole days at a time. In a foreign city. I suppose it could have brought us closer if we had really been in love. But that wasn’t the case. I say, “I suppose,” because the more time goes by, the more I wonder if I’ve ever been in love. It was as if I was wrapped in a thin layer of plastic that kept me apart from other people. But maybe it’s the same for everyone. Every human being must wonder what it means “to be in love.” What came closest, for me, was a desire to spend my everyday life with another person: morning breath, the coziness of a night without sex, breakfast for two and then for four, X-Factor programs on TV on Saturday evenings. I know there’s nothing at all exciting about any of that.
In fact, I could easily have shared my everyday life with Cécile Duffaut. We got along well. It’s just that when you’re twenty that’s not enough. You dream about things that’ll blow you sky-high, full of incredible passion, you want to be beside yourself with emotion and euphoria and pain, your heart beating wildly. You’re convinced that unless you’re experiencing all that you must be heading down the wrong path, and the relationship is not worth the effort.
And then after a while you realize it’s not going to happen.
So either you become resigned, or you make believe. You waltz around like some nineteenth century heroine, sighing, moaning, weeping — and you lie. And all around you, people call it love.
With Christine there was never any of that. No love at first sight. We hung out with the same group of friends. So we saw a lot of each other and eyed each other and circled around each other for months. I invited her to a party. We went home together. Everything flowed, it was all completely natural. Since then I’ve been thinking of love as something that flows.
Did it flow between Cécile and me?
Yes.
There’s a woman in her thirties a bit farther down the car; she looks tired. A child asleep with its head on her lap.
Yes.
An adolescent nodding his head, listening to some music the other passengers will never hear, but in his ears it’s exploding.
Yes.
An older man muttering to himself while he reads a magazine about the private lives of the rich and famous.
Yes.
And the two of us, sitting next to each other — we could have been a couple. We could have made believe.
But I’m not sure that Cécile Duffaut is the sort of woman who would make believe. She’s recognized me. She doesn’t want to speak to me. She’s right.
I was almost at the hotel. I could see her on the balcony. I didn’t feel like going in, explaining, negotiating, arguing. I thought she would have packed her bags. I went to a pub on the corner of the street. I don’t remember the name, just the color. Red, with gilded letters.
It was starting to fill up with locals. I drank three or four pints. Enough to tear down the language barrier. I fraternized with a group of Brits my age who were planning a trip to France to go girl-hunting, because it was a well-known fact, aah, those French girls, etc.
Jerks.
The kind you find in every country.
You find them mainly in bars, after office hours. Herds of guys, with their coarse laughter, spilling booze on their T-shirts, and saying they’ll do anything to get laid. I couldn’t understand half of what these guys were saying but it hardly mattered. I felt good. I was a jerk. I’m not saying this out of bitterness. Or out of scorn. It’s just a fact.
One of them was making racist jokes about Pakistanis, and I laughed like an idiot. Laughed, maybe, but I was uncomfortable all the same, because back in France I wouldn’t have put up with intolerance. Later that evening I spoke with this guy Andrew, who was quieter. He was getting drunk methodically, to forget that he hadn’t had a girlfriend in over a year. The two of us went on to a nightclub.
It was one of those unlikely sorts of discotheques that you sometimes come across in Anglo-Saxon countries. A church turned into a dance floor. A place of worship, for the body, for appearance. The atmosphere was distinctly different, depending on whether you were in the chapel or the nave. In the nave, the music took up all the space and the light was dazzling; it was crowded and it was hard to make your way to the bar. The bass was pounding in your ears and you couldn’t think straight. Andrew didn’t want to dance. He sat down on one of the wooden pews the designer had preserved. He guzzled beer after beer, staring into space. At one point, he vanished. I can still see his face, just as he was. I picture him married and divorced with one kid, the manager of a mobile phone outlet in a London suburb.