Villeneuve removed his trousers and socks and lay down beside my body. Well, at that point I did realize what was going on, and I was dumbstruck. It’s easy enough to imagine what came next, but it wasn’t what you’d call bacchanalian. Villeneuve hugged me, caressed me, kissed me chastely on the lips. He massaged my penis and testicles with something of the delicacy once lavished on me by Cécile Lamballe, the woman of my dreams, and after a quarter of an hour of cuddling in the semi-darkness I noticed that he had an erection. My god, I thought, now he’s going to sodomize me. But that’s not what happened. To my surprise, the designer rubbed himself against one of my thighs till he came. I would have liked to shut my eyes at that point but I couldn’t. My reactions were contradictory; I felt disgusted by what I was seeing, grateful for not having been sodomized, surprised to discover Villeneuve’s secret, angry at the orderlies for having rented out my body, and even flattered to have served, unwillingly, as an object of desire for one of the most famous men in France.
After coming, Villeneuve closed his eyes and sighed. In that sigh I thought I could detect a hint of disgust. He sat up quickly and stayed there on the sofa with his back to my body for a few seconds, while he wiped his dripping member with his hand. You should be ashamed, I said.
It was the first time I’d spoken since my death. Villeneuve raised his head, quite unsurprised, or at any rate much less surprised than I would have been in his situation, while reaching down with one hand to feel for his glasses on the carpet.
I knew at once that he had heard me. It seemed like a miracle. Suddenly I felt so happy that I forgave him his act of depravity. And yet, like an idiot, I repeated: You should be ashamed. Who’s there? said Villeneuve. It’s me, I said, the ghost of the body you just raped. Villeneuve went pale, and then, almost simultaneously, a blush rose in his cheeks. I was worried that he would have a heart attack or die of fright, although to tell the truth he didn’t look all that frightened.
It’s not a problem, I said in a conciliatory tone, You’re forgiven.
Villeneuve switched on the light and looked in all the corners of the room. I thought he’d gone crazy, because there was clearly no one else there; only a pygmy could have hidden in that room, not even a pygmy, a gnome. But then I realized that, far from being crazy, the designer was displaying nerves of steeclass="underline" he wasn’t looking for a person but a speaker. As I calmed down, I felt a surge of sympathy for him. There was something admirable about his methodical way of searching the room. Me, I’d have been out of there like a shot.
I’m no speaker, I said. Nor am I a video camera. Please, try to calm down; take a seat and we can talk. And most of all, don’t be afraid of me. I’m not going to do anything to you. That’s what I said; then I kept quiet and watched Villeneuve, who barely hesitated before continuing his search. I let him go ahead. While he messed up the room, I remained seated in one of the comfortable armchairs. Then I had an idea. I suggested that we shut ourselves in a small room (as small as a coffin were my exact words), where no speakers or cameras could possibly have been planted, and I could go on talking to him there and convince him to accept my nature, my new nature, that is. But while he was considering my proposal, it occurred to me that I hadn’t expressed myself very well, since my ghostly state could not be called, in any sense, a “nature.” My nature, however you looked at it, was still that of a living being. And yet it was clear that I was not alive. The thought crossed my mind that it might all be a dream. Summoning some ghostly courage, I told myself that if it was a dream, the best (and the only) thing I could do was to go on dreaming. From experience I know that trying to wrench yourself out of a nightmare is futile and simply adds pain to pain or terror to terror.
So I repeated my proposal, and this time Villeneuve stopped searching and froze (I examined his face, which I’d seen so often in the glossy magazines, and saw the same expression, a solitary, elegant expression, although now there were a few telltale drops of sweat rolling down his forehead and his cheeks). He left the room. I followed him. Halfway down a long corridor, he stopped and said: Are you still with me? His voice was strangely appealing, rich in tones that seemed to be converging on a genuine warmth, though perhaps it was just an illusion.
I’m here, I said.
Villeneuve moved his head in a way I couldn’t interpret and continued to wander through his house, stopping in each room and on each landing to ask if I was still with him, a question to which I replied without fail, trying to make my voice sound relaxed, or at least trying to give it a singular tone (in life it was always an ordinary, run-of-the-mill sort of voice), no doubt influenced by the reedy (sometimes almost whistle-like) yet extremely distinguished voice of the designer. To each reply I also added details about the place where we happened to be, with the aim of achieving greater credibility; for example, if there was a lamp with a tobacco-colored shade and a wrought iron stand, I said so. I’m still here, next to you, and now we’re in a room where the only source of light is a lamp with a tobacco-colored shade and a wrought iron stand. And Villeneuve said yes or corrected me — That’s cast iron — but his eyes were fixed on the ground as he spoke, as if he was afraid that I might suddenly materialize, or didn’t want to embarrass me, and I’d say: Sorry, I didn’t notice, or: That’s what I meant. And Villeneuve moved his head ambivalently, as if accepting my excuses or just getting a clearer idea of the ghost he had to deal with.
And so we went all around the house, and as we moved from place to place, Villeneuve grew or seemed to grow calmer, while I became more nervous, because I’ve never been much good at describing things, especially if they’re not objects in everyday use, or if they happen to be paintings no doubt worth a fortune by contemporary artists I know absolutely nothing about, or sculptures that Villeneuve had collected in the course of his travels (incognito) all around the world.
And so on, until we came to a little room, covered inside with a layer of cement, in which there was nothing, not one piece of furniture, not a single light, and we shut ourselves in that room, in the dark. An embarrassing situation, on the face of it, but for me it was like a second or a third birth; that is, it was like hope beginning and with it the desperate awareness of hope. Villeneuve said: Describe the place where we are now. And I said that it was like death, not like real death but death as we imagine it when we’re alive. And Villeneuve said: Describe it. Everything is dark, I said. It’s like a nuclear bomb shelter. And I added that in a place like that the soul contracts, and I would have gone on spelling out what I felt, the void that had come to inhabit my soul long before I died and of which I’d been unaware until then, but Villeneuve cut me off me, saying, That’s enough, he believed me, and suddenly he opened the door.
I followed him to the main living room, where he poured himself a whiskey and proceeded, in a few well-measured sentences, to ask me to forgive him for what he had done with my body. You’re forgiven, I said. I’m open-minded. To be honest, I’m not sure I know what being open-minded means, but I felt it was my duty to wipe the slate clean and clear our future relationship of any guilt or resentment.