“In any event,” Marc adds, “you’ll be under constant scrutiny from now on. Every Tom, Dick, and Jane will take your picture and broadcast everything you say and do on the social networks. That’s why Prime Minister Milton avoids being seen in public. You, however, will take the opposite tack. Once you’ve become a friendly, familiar face for Canadians, we’ll address the other issues. Just in time for the elections.”
Ariel grudgingly opens the folder his publicist has given him, but he is unable to concentrate. The little MP’s office where he grew accustomed to working alone now seems far away. His new quarters bustle day and night; pressing yet altogether insignificant issues arise at all hours. He thinks about his parents, who picture him toiling over the fate of the nation, and feels somewhat ashamed as he turns a page filled with the twelve prescribed shirt styles, arranged in a gamut from “impromptu stroll,” to “formal ceremony.” Then his thoughts turn to Marie.
When he describes how he spent his day, she of course will refrain from criticizing, but her silence is what will hurt him the most. Without saying a word, she has witnessed each of his compromises since he was first elected, and her extraordinary rectitude has hovered over the hard decisions to which Ariel gave his consent. He must win this election. A single action on his part, the slightest correction of the country’s ruinous trajectory would be enough for him to win the wager he made.
Keeping the tumult that surrounds him at bay, Ariel hangs on for an instant to the bright, hazy image of his wife and lets it dance momentarily above the Ottawa skyline before he opens his eyes again, signs an official letter, forwards an email message, clears his throat, replies to a counterpart, straightens his tie, shakes a hand, finds the right tone, refines an argument, improves his standing in the polls, defends his position, aims higher, qualifies without lying, drives his point home without shouting, bends without breaking.
“There’s always something blinking,” Marie grumbles as she slips a shawl over her eyes in a vain attempt to shut out the icy glow given off by the computer, the mobile phone, the router, the satellite radio, the alarm clock that in less than three hours will start screaming to wrench them out of sleep. Only three hours of sleep left. The thought is enough to rouse the little beasts running through the most rebellious parts of her body: her hands so sensitive to the cold, her hair poking around in the orifices of her face, her feet rippling with tiny spasms. The ticking of her watch on the dresser punctuates the twitching of her extremities. She clenches her jaw.
When you’re trying hard to sleep, the slightest rustle, the tiniest tremor in the air becomes unbearable. Marie has been awake for four hours on this her third day battling insomnia. But she forces herself to stay still. She knows that even in the deepest recesses of a dream, Ariel manages to distinguish the sinuous movements of sleep from the firm, sharp ones of wakefulness; in a few seconds, he would be sitting up in the bed asking her what’s the matter.
And there would be so much to say in answer to that question. From the moment Ariel’s position as party leader was confirmed, Marie has been worrying herself sick. This was unexpected. She had believed she would experience nothing but joy on seeing her husband’s unflagging efforts finally rewarded. And yet, the phone call that decided their future filled her straightaway with a sense of foreboding. She has the feeling they will never again be alone and that the lack of privacy will destroy them. Even now in their bedroom, where no one else sets foot, it’s as though they were here: the advisers, the delegates, the spokespeople — a shadow cabinet surrounding their bed, together with reporters behaving like Dobermans, and, in the closets or under the box-spring, hordes of lobbyists also waiting for a bone. And this is just the start.
She does not relish the thought of the entire nation knowing her name from now on. She does not relish the prospect of being held up to scrutiny, of people detecting the weariness underneath her foundation, the blood rushing to her cheeks, the nervousness gathering in the hollow of her fist; she, who has no secrets, all at once feels she has so much to hide when it comes to her tastes, her failings and rare moments of cowardice, her family, her background, her youthful peccadilloes. She would never dare to voice this malaise to Ariel, who is more inured to public life. He would not understand why things now appear so burdensome to her. He would not acknowledge that their lives no longer belong to them, that they no longer constitute a closed unit, let alone a family in the making. The house’s framework lets out a creak, and she starts in spite of herself.
On the east side of the bed, Ariel is dreaming of a gigantic hedge, a row of trees so dense one cannot see through it. But on the other side he hears the roar of an approaching storm, a ravenous ogre on the march. Suddenly the trees all come crashing down together. He opens his eyes, turns westward and, stretching his arm, strokes his wife’s back.
“What’s the matter, my love?”
Before she has time to respond, he sits up, and turns on the bedside lamp, instantly killing the constellation of blinking lights. Marie’s rumpled face comes into view. Ariel gets up, takes his wife by the hand and leads her downstairs. In the kitchen, he boils some whole milk, to which he adds a drop of rum. Then he opens the door onto the night as vast as the sea. Marie steps out onto the porch, straightens the plush blanket on the swing, and sits down next to Ariel. They let the tenderness of late August rock them, with its headwinds unsure of which season to usher in. Behind a thin layer of clouds, the Perseids are on the wane. The silence is absolute.
“You see,” Ariel says, “there’s no one. No reporters, no staff. Nights still belong to us.”
Marie nods in agreement, warmed by the delicate puffs of vapour rising from her cup.
“Our core hasn’t moved, my love. It’s smaller but denser. What we put into it doesn’t change. And it doesn’t concern anyone but us.”
“A child?”
“Secrets. New honeymoons, getaways to inns that the satellites can’t see. A child — yes, of course. As many children as you wish. You don’t believe me?”
Marie purses her lips. So Ariel gently gets to his feet, removes the cup from her hand, and kneels down in front of her to split open her nightgown one button at a time. After the twelfth, he’ll plunge into the narrow precinct of his wife’s breasts, where her scent is sweetest, and he will make love to her with a kind of intensity that arises just once a year, when the seasons waver between hot and cold, baffled by incomprehensible climate cycles, by ocean currents that have become strangers to themselves.
The first time they met, they fainted. Ariel approached her with a leaflet put out by the student association, Marie extended her fingers toward the hand that he held out to her insistently, and as soon as their palms touched they both collapsed in perfect synchronicity on the parched campus lawn. When they regained consciousness they had no recollection of falling down, only the feeling that a warm wave had swept over their bodies and lingered like the pleasant burning sensation one gets after a day in the sun. Some students who were reading nearby told them they had lain there inert for more than three minutes. No one ventured to revive them because they were thought to be actors rehearsing a scene.
This peculiar prelude did not keep them from agreeing to meet three days later in a draughty café on the McGill University campus. Ariel came up behind her, laid his hand on Marie’s shoulder, but before she could even turn around and recognize him they both crumpled to the floor in a peaceful, almost graceful fall. This time an attempt was made to rouse them, but to no avail. Their immobility, though harmless, was persistent.