* * *
Marianne found the strength to tell him the name of the café and its precise location. It was pouring rain the day she came here for the first time — four months ago, in October. She was working on an article, something she’d been commissioned to do by the local Heritage office; she had revisited the Saint-Joseph church, Oscar Niemeyer’s Volcan, a sample apartment in a building designed by Perret — all these buildings whose architectural movement and radicalism she loved — but her notebook had begun to get soaked, and, sitting in the bar, dripping rainwater onto the floor, she had downed a whiskey, neat; Sean had started sleeping in the warehouse back then, having left the apartment without taking anything with him.
She sees her outline in the mirror at the back of the room, then her face, which he will soon see after all this time, after so much accumulated silence; she had long imagined this moment, promising herself she would be beautiful when it came, beautiful as she still could be, and that he would be dazzled, or at least moved, but the dried tears have tightened her skin, as if covered with a clay mask, and he will hardly even be able to see her pale-green eyes, whose depths he loves to look into, because her eyelids are so puffy.
* * *
She downs the glass of gin and then he is there, standing in front of her, his face haggard, tiny particles of wood dusting his hair, encrusted in the folds of his clothes, in the stitching of his wool sweater. She stands up abruptly, and her chair tips over backward — landing with a clatter — but she doesn’t turn around: she stands facing him, one hand lying flat on the table to support her unsteady legs, the other hanging down at her side. They look at each other for a fraction of a second, then one step forward and they embrace, hug each other so hard it’s as if they’re being crushed together, heads pressed firmly enough to crack their skulls, shoulders bruised, arms aching from gripping so tightly, their scarfs, jackets, and coats merging into one, the kind of embrace you share to protect yourself from a tornado or to prepare for a fall into an abyss, an end-of-the-world type thing, and yet, at the same time, at exactly the same time, it is a gesture that reconnects them — their lips touch — that emphasizes and abolishes the distance between them, and when they free themselves from the embrace, when they finally let go of each other, stunned and exhausted, they are like shipwreck survivors.
* * *
When they sit down, Sean sniffs Marianne’s glass. Gin? Marianne’s smile turns to a pained grimace and she hands him the menu. Then she starts to read out a list of everything he could order for lunch, for example croque-monsieur, croque-madame, salade périgourdine; haddock and potatoes, a plain omelet, tartine provençale, sausages and fries, crème caramel, crème vanille, apple tart … If she could, she would read out every item on the menu and then start over again at the beginning just in order to delay the moment when they would have to face up to the misery, to the darkness and tears. He lets her do it, watching her without a word. Then, suddenly losing his patience, he grabs her wrist, pressing down on the artery. Stop. Please. He orders a gin too.
So, Marianne arms herself with courage — armed, yes, that’s exactly it: a sort of naked aggression has been growing since their embrace, and she covers herself in it, protects herself like someone brandishing a dagger — and, sitting up straight on the bench, she announces the three statements she has prepared, her eyes staring straight ahead. When he hears the last one—“irreversible”—Sean shakes his head and his face crumples, convulses, no, no, no, then he stands up heavily, knocks the table — the gin jumping inside its glass — and walks toward the door, arms hanging by his sides and his fists balled as if he were carrying something heavy, with the tread of a man who has just beaten the shit out of someone, some guy who was asking for it. As soon as he’s outside, on the doorstep, he abruptly turns around and goes back to the table they were sitting at, moving forward through the ray of sunlight painted on the floor, and his silhouette, backlit, is haloed with a grayish film — the sawdust that covers him sprayed up into the air each time his foot hits the ground. His body is smoking. He leans his torso forward, as if he’s about to charge. When he gets to the table, he grabs the glass of gin and downs it, then barks at Marianne, who is already tying her scarf around her neck. Come on.
10
The room is bathed in half-light, the floor reflecting the frozen sky from between the slats of the blinds. He has to wait for his eyes to adjust before he can make out the machines, the furniture, and the body that inhabit this room. Simon Limbres is there, lying on his back in a bed, a white sheet pulled up to his chest. He is on a ventilator, and the sheet lifts slightly with each inhalation, a small but perceptible movement that makes it look as if he’s asleep. The sounds of the hospital are muffled here, and the constant beeping and buzzing of the electrical equipment seems only to heighten the silence. It might easily be a normal patient’s room, were it not for the subdued lighting, that impression of withdrawal, as if the room were situated outside the hospital, in a depressurized cell where nothing more was at stake.