Marie was basking in the sun next to me on the rocks. Tiny beads of water covered her naked body, and the sun, drying her little by little, left almost invisible specks of salt on her skin, whose taste I imagined vividly on the tip of my tongue. After a moment, pensive, her eyes closed, she moved her hand gently in my direction and uttered in a soft voice these enigmatic words: “I wasn’t his mistress, you know,” and these words resounded briefly in the silence of the cove. She didn’t say whose mistress, but I’d understood, and I was grateful for her not having named him (as for myself, I pretended to have forgotten his name). Marie lay motionless on her back, her eyes closed, one knee bent, her hand flat against the rocks. The silence grew in the cove, broken only by the soft murmur of the waves lapping below. What was the point in telling me she wasn’t his mistress? That she hadn’t slept with him? This was highly unlikely, if not impossible, even if we could easily imagine that theirs hadn’t been a sexual relationship in a strict sense, or in juridical terms, according to which sexual relations are dependent upon penetration, by whose definition fellatio and cunnilingus are excluded (in short, the activities two people can enjoy without necessarily becoming lovers), but I doubt that was what she was trying to tell me, no, not that. Marie seemed serious, she looked bothered, and the tone she’d used had had the sad solemnity of a confession or admission. I continued to look at her, and I wondered why she’d felt the need to tell me on this day that she wasn’t his mistress (which, by the way, isn’t the same as saying that she hadn’t been his mistress, the past perfect tense she’d used — rather than the pluperfect — allows in its ambiguity this lie by omission). Perhaps she’d simply wanted to let me know she’d never felt attached to him, that she’d always felt free and couldn’t in any case be considered the mistress of a married man, that it was in a way the word mistress, with its social connotations more than its actual reality, that she objected to, denying the word could be applied to her given its incongruity with her situation. I don’t know. Or perhaps she’d simply wanted to let me know that, in the end, she didn’t love him, she hadn’t ever loved him, that, certainly she’d liked him, he’d come into her life at the right moment, she’d loved his kindness, his consideration, his gallantry, his easygoing personality, with him, life was simple, comfortable, reassuring — but ultimately it was someone else that she loved.
Marie and I spent a week together at La Rivercina, our flirting had become more brazen as we relearned each other’s personality, passing one another on the first floor of the house with our towels flung over our shoulders and a seductive gleam in our eyes, crossing paths intentionally in the garden, separating only to return to each other’s side as soon as possible. As the days passed, the distance between our bodies began to dwindle inexorably, becoming more and more tenuous, diminishing every hour, as if soon bound to dissolve altogether. Our bodies grazed, at night, on the terrace, as we cleared the candle-lit table, and our shadows hardly parted in the night, each secretly seeking the contact of the other in the dark. At times, at night, in the kitchen, while we prepared dinner, as I checked the tomato sauce simmering on the old gas stove, a wooden spoon in my hand, Marie would come up from behind me, and I’d feel the silent wave of her body against mine, her bare arm brushing past me as she added to the sauce a few sage leaves she’d picked from the garden, and sometimes I’d even feel her fingers on my cheek, scratching my stubble and teasing me for not having shaved. I’d grab her hand and pull it away, and I thought about how this same gesture could take on different meanings according to the way in which it was carried out, without ceremony or concern, or else accompanied with a stare and clear intent, a sudden gravity, slowing down the act to give it significance and meaning, as I’d done that night in the kitchen, ceding to this sudden impulse without having given it any thought beforehand, spontaneously, ignoring its consequences, holding her hand in the kitchen and gazing into her eyes, our hands and eyes momentarily suspended in time. She wore a baggy white shirt dampened by the humidity and had her old flip-flops on her feet, one of the daisies was in poor shape, probably damaged on some dirt path, looking as if its petals had been plucked (he loves me, he loves me not) by a stray and wistful hand, on the whole a touching spectacle. Marie suddenly looked serious, she became pensive and stepped toward me, and I wrapped my arms around her, for a moment we stood like that against the stove, holding each other in the kitchen, lulled by the delectable bubbling of the tomato sauce simmering over a low flame. It was only an isolated moment of intimacy, but I understood then that we’d perhaps never been as close as when we were apart.
After dinner I’d return to my room, I’d open the window and a rare breeze would pass through the room, through the hot nights on the Island. I’d lie down on the bed, I’d lie still in the dark, keeping the light off to prevent the mosquitoes from coming in. Since the first night I’d spent in this room at La Rivercina, Marie’s presence on the floor above me had haunted me, I knew she was right there above me, I’d hear her moving around in her room and I’d know what she was doing, I could follow her movements in the room in real time, I’d hear the weight of her steps on the wooden floor, and I’d know she was going from her bed to the oak armoire, I’d hear the quiet creaking of its hinges as she’d open it and I’d imagine her choosing a T-shirt for the night, whose color, smell and texture I could picture clearly. At times, the sound of her steps on the floor faded and gave way to the rush of water in the bathroom, the squeal of a faucet turning on and off in a chorus of aching pipes, then the patter of her feet returned to the room, light and swift. I’d hear Marie crawl into bed, and, after a moment, closing my eyes in the dark to concentrate more attentively, I’d hear her fall asleep. There was nothing physical or material about this, I couldn’t hear the quiet moans and whimpers she made while she slept, no more than the violent storm of sheets she’d set off toward three in the morning, when, pulling with all her might at a stubborn corner of the covers, she’d roll her shoulder furiously trying to turn over on her side, but I could hear the murmur of her dreams playing in her mind. Or could it be in my own mind through which Marie’s dreams now passed, as though, after thinking about her constantly, after evoking her presence, after living vicariously through her, I’d started to imagine, at night, that I dreamed her dreams.
I knew all the silences of the house, its nocturnal creaks, the descending scale of fitful coughs made by the refrigerator in the night, after which it would jolt and then resume its steady hum in the dark stillness of the dormant house. In the morning, waking up at dawn, I’d lie in bed listening to the birds’ first chirps, so quiet that their fluid modulations merged with the surrounding silence. The house was quiet, Marie and I were alone in this big deserted house, sleeping on different floors, the other rooms unoccupied or empty, her father’s office cleaned out, packed boxes ready to be taken away. All was still in the dormant house, I listened and heard nothing, not a single creak or rustle, Marie lay motionless in her bed, I knew she was asleep above me, and this distance between us, this small hindrance of a floor keeping us apart, this tiny separation made Marie even more desirable to me. Unable to turn toward her and gently squeeze her arm when I woke up, I had to imagine her presence on the floor above me, to recreate her in my mind. And so, behind my closed eyes, she took form progressively, slowly shedding her chrysalis as she appeared in my mind, lying on her bed, her eyes closed and her lips parted, her chest gently rising and falling with the rhythm of her breath, one leg under the covers, and the other, loose, hanging over the bed uncovered, the sheet folded snugly between her thighs.