How many of them are looking directly at the photographer? Only half of the group: Henric, J.-J. Goux, Sollers and Marc Devade. Marie-Thérèse Réveillé and Carla Devade are looking away to the left, past Henric. Guyotat’s gaze is angled slightly to the right, fixed on a point a yard or two from where the photographer is standing. And Kristeva, whose gaze is the strangest of all, appears to be looking straight at the camera, but in fact she’s looking at the photographer’s stomach, or to be more precise, into the empty space beside his hip.
The photo was taken in winter or autumn, or maybe at the beginning of spring, but certainly not in summer. Who are the most warmly dressed? J.-J. Goux, Sollers and Marc Devade, without question: they’re wearing jackets over their turtleneck sweaters, and thick jackets too from the look of them, especially J.-J. and Devade’s. Kristeva is a case apart: her turtleneck sweater is light, more elegant than practical, and she’s not wearing anything over it. Then we have Guyotat. He might be as warmly dressed as the four I’ve already mentioned. He doesn’t seem to be, but it’s true that he’s the only one wearing three layers: the black leather jacket, the shirt and the striped T-shirt. You could imagine him wearing those clothes even if the photo had been taken in summer. It’s quite possible. All we can say for sure is that Guyotat is dressed as if he were on his way to somewhere else. As for Carla Devade, she’s in between. Her blouse, whose collar is showing over the top of her sweater, looks soft and warm; the sweater itself is casual, but of good quality, neither very heavy nor very light. Finally we have Jacques Henric and Marie Thérèse Réveillé. Henric is clearly not a man who feels the cold, although his Canadian lumberjack’s shirt looks warm enough. And the least warmly dressed of all is Marie-Thérèse Réveillé. Under her light, knitted, open-necked sweater there are only her breasts, cupped by a black or white bra.
All of them, more or less warmly dressed, captured by the camera at that moment in 1977 or thereabouts, are friends, and some of them are lovers too. For a start, Sollers and Kristeva, obviously, and the two Devades, Marc and Carla. Those, we might say, are the stable couples. And yet there are certain features of the photo (something about the arrangement of the objects, the petrified, musical rhododendron, two of its leaves invading the space of the ficus like clouds within a cloud, the grass growing in the planter, which looks more like fire than grass, the immortelle leaning whimsically to the left, the glasses in the center of the table, well away from the edges, except for Kristeva’s, as if the other members of the group were worried they might fall) which suggest that there is a more complex and subtle web of relations among these men and women.
Let’s imagine J.-J. Goux, for example, who is looking out at us through his thick submarine spectacles.
His space in the photo is momentarily vacant and we see him walking along Rue de l’École de Médecine, with books under his arm, of course, two books, till he comes out onto the Boulevard Saint-Germain. There he turns his steps toward the Mabillon metro station, but first he stops in front of a bar, checks the time, goes in and orders a cognac. After a while J.-J. moves away from the bar and sits down at a table near the window. What does he do? He opens a book. We can’t tell what book it is, but we do know that he’s finding it difficult to concentrate. Every twenty seconds or so he lifts his head and looks out onto the Boulevard Saint-Germain, his gaze a little more gloomy each time. It’s raining and people are walking hurriedly under their open umbrellas. J.-J.’s blond hair isn’t wet, from which we can deduce that it began to rain after he entered the bar. It’s getting dark. J.-J. remains seated in the same place, and now there are two cognacs and two coffees on his tab. Coming closer we can see that the dark rings under his eyes have the look of a war zone. At no point has he taken off his glasses. He’s a pitiful sight. After a very long wait, he goes back out onto the street where he is gripped by a shiver, perhaps because of the cold. For a moment he stands still on the sidewalk and looks both ways, then he starts walking in the direction of the Mabillon metro station. When he reaches the entrance, he runs his hand through his hair several times, as if he’d suddenly realized that his hair was a mess, although it’s not. Then he goes down the steps and the story ends or freezes in an empty space where appearances gradually fade away. Who was J.-J. Goux waiting for? Someone he’s in love with? Someone he was hoping to sleep with that night? And how was his delicate sensibility affected by that person’s failure to show up?
Let’s suppose that the person who didn’t come was Jacques Henric. While J.-J. was waiting for him, Henric was riding a 250-cc Honda motorbike to the entrance of the apartment building where the Devades live. But no. That’s impossible. Let’s imagine that Henric simply climbed onto his Honda and rode away into a vaguely literary, vaguely unstable Paris, and that his absence on this occasion is strategic, as amorous absences nearly always are.
So let’s set up the couples again. Carla Devade and Marc Devade. Sollers and Kristeva. J.-J. Goux and Jacques Henric. Marie-Thérèse Réveillé and Pierre Guyotat. And let’s set up the night. J.-J. Goux is sitting and reading a book whose title is immaterial, in a bar on the Boulevard Saint-Germain; his turtleneck sweater won’t let his skin breathe, but he doesn’t yet feel entirely ill at ease. Henric is stretched out on his bed, half undressed, smoking and looking at the ceiling. Sollers is shut up in his study, writing (pinkly snug and warm inside his turtleneck sweater). Julia Kristeva is at the university. Marie-Thérèse Réveillé is walking along Avenue de Friedland near the intersection with Rue Balzac, and the headlights of cars are shining in her face. Guyotat is in a bar on Rue Lacépède, near the Jardin des Plantes, drinking with some friends. Carla Devade is in her apartment, sitting on a chair in the kitchen, doing nothing. Marc Devade is at the Tel Quel office, speaking politely on the phone to one of the poets he most admires and hates. Soon Sollers and Kristeva will be together, reading after dinner. They will not make love tonight. Soon Marie-Thérèse Réveillé and Guyotat will be together in bed, and he will sodomize her. They will fall asleep at five in the morning, after exchanging a few words in the bathroom. Soon Carla Devade and Marc Devade will be together, and she will shout, and he will shout, and she will go to the bedroom and pick up a novel, any one of the many that are lying on her bedside table, and he will sit at his desk and try to write but he won’t be able to. Carla will fall asleep at one in the morning, Marc at half-past two, and they will try not to touch each other. Soon Jacques Henric will go down to the underground parking lot and climb onto his Honda and venture out into the cold streets of Paris, becoming cold himself, a man who shapes his own destiny, and knows, or at least believes, that he is lucky. He will be the only member of the group to see the day dawning, with the disastrous retreat of the last night wanderers, each an enigmatic letter in an imaginary alphabet. Soon J.-J. Goux, who was the first to fall asleep, will have a dream in which a photo will appear, and he’ll hear a voice warning him of the devil’s presence and of hapless death. He’ll wake with a start from this dream or auditory nightmare and won’t be able to get back to sleep for the rest of the night.