I was soaked, dripping wet, water streamed down the sleeves of my coat to form a small puddle at my feet on the floor. When outside I didn’t feel a thing, I didn’t even realize I was wet. My coat was now like a formless wet rag hanging from my shoulders, my shirt stuck against my chest, the fabric of my clothes stretched and weighed down by this syrupy rain, even my socks, swashing inside my shoes at every step, left me with that awful physical sensation that can only come from wet socks. I took off my socks and shoes, which I left near the window, and I walked through the room barefoot, letting the water drip from my outstretched arms, leaving trails of rain in my wake. I unbuttoned my sticky wet shirt and I looked around the room. It had hardly changed since I’d left, there was a new desk, but all in all it looked the same as when I’d moved out. I saw my old dresser still right where I’d left it, with my clothes probably still inside, the bulk of my clothes I hadn’t had time to take. I crouched down in front of it and opened its drawers, rummaged through the clothes, a mess of sweaters, shirts, pajamas, an old bathing suit stretched out at the waist. I grabbed a shirt and some other clothes to change into, began undressing.
Marie had remade the bed carelessly and sat against the wall to smoke a cigarette in the half-light, her legs making a Z under her XL T-shirt. She’d turned off all the lamps except for one near the bed, whose light was dimmed. She sat there silently for a long time, distraught, a vacant look on her face, then, in a soft voice and without looking at me, she started to tell me about Jean-Christophe de G., taking a drag of her cigarette from time to time, she told me she’d met him in Tokyo earlier that year at her exhibition’s opening at the Contemporary Art Space of Shinagawa, she told me about his work and many projects, he was a businessman and art connoisseur, told me she saw him again a few times in Paris when she’d come back from Japan, three or four times in the first few months, then less frequently, they’d spent a weekend together in Rome, but really they hardly knew each other. Marie explained all this to me without considering the pain it might cause me, and I kept silent, asked no questions. I’d taken off my jacket and shirt and I was drying my back with a large white bath towel as I listened to her. I began to take my pants off, not without some difficulty as the material stuck to my skin, then I removed my boxers, letting them fall down to the ground at me feet. Marie continued to talk, her need to talk, to confide in someone was clear, she went over the night in detail, looking for the signs that could have warned her, a certain sluggishness, shortness of breath, spells of dizziness, the sense of unease he’d felt at the restaurant. I was standing naked in the half-light and no longer paying her much attention, I dried my neck, my sides, I rubbed the towel around my thighs, I scrubbed between my legs (and I must admit it felt quite nice).
I was still buttoning my shirt, my bare legs on the hardwood floor, when I glimpsed my reflection in the mirror on the mantel, one of those large gilded mirrors you find in Parisian apartments, its pediment in the shape of a decorative flame in plaster molding depicting an elegant tangle of intertwined acanthus leaves. I took a step forward and saw my reflection move in sync in the patinated depths of the mirror, its surface flecked and discolored and splotched by patches of darkness, my dark face disappearing into its shadows. The room around me faded into the surrounding darkness, the softened edges of the furniture could hardly be discerned, Marie’s desk where her computer was lit appeared without detail. I saw myself there, faceless, standing in the room where I’d lived for almost six years. Marie was still sitting against the wall. From where I was standing I heard nothing but her voice, her neutral and empty voice, telling me that Jean-Christophe de G. was married and that was why she wasn’t with him in the ambulance, an act of prudence in a way, so that his wife could be notified when he got to the hospital. But now she wondered how she’d find out about his condition, she didn’t even know which hospital they were taking him to.
I walked around the room and took the bottle of grappa from the ledge of the mantle. Marie lifted her eyes toward me, and I saw her expression change immediately. Her attitude had taken a sudden turn, her look of sorrow gave way abruptly to one of coldness, of fierceness, she became distant and firm in her stubbornness, her face tensed in a grimace, her jaws clenched, this expression of cold rage and fury that I knew so well from when she tried to hide her feelings lest she begin to cry. Now she shot me an angry look, an expression I’d never seen splitting the corners of her mouth into tiny nasty wrinkles, and hate quickly flared up in her eyes. Why was it that each time we were together there was always a moment when, suddenly and without warning, she hated me with a passion.
Marie must have felt caught when she saw me grab the bottle of grappa. Perhaps she’d understood that this bottle gave her away, that, here in this room at this time, it called attention to itself, glared immodestly, indecently even — and she was right. Once I’d noticed the bottle I knew she’d had some grappa with Jean-Christophe de G. this very night, and, from this, I could easily imagine what took place between them in this room. She knew right away that, given this one tangible detail, this lone bottle of grappa, I could imagine her whole night, could see in detail what went on between them — down to their very kisses, down to the taste of grappa in their kisses — as in dreams, where a sole detail from our own intimate experience can unleash a rush of imaginary details no less vivid, and she knew that, now having a tangible reference on the one hand (the bottle of grappa) and a visual reference on the other (my witnessing the stretcher leaving the building in the night), I was now able to fill in the empty space between these two points of reference, and reconstruct, recreate, or invent what Marie had lived in my absence.
Marie remained seated for a while, silent, pensive, arms crossed, staring with an exasperated expression at my wet clothes on the dresser, then she jumped to her feet and told me to get rid of that dead weight, my dresser, right now and for good. This had gone on too long, she’d been living with this piece of shit in her room for five months now, it had to be moved to the ground floor immediately, not a second longer would this be tolerated, it had to go now. This wasn’t a suggestion, it was an order. She couldn’t bear to look at it any longer, this worthless commode, she said “commode,” she called my dresser “commode” with visible disgust, her contempt seemed to attach to the word itself: commode. Commode. She stormed over to this commode, her thighs bare under her baggy white T-shirt, and she tried to lift it, in a rage, with one hand, any which way, but there was nothing to grab onto, there were no handles or edges, its finished wood was all decorative curves impossible to grip. I walked over to the other side of the dresser to help her and we struggled to lift it up off the ground, raising it a mere ten centimeters at most, it was extremely heavy, before dropping it right back down, Marie let go of it, let it fall hard to the floor, made no effort to let it down gently, it pounded the floor violently, the angle of its feet crashing down loudly and chipping the hardwood floor. Marie, barefoot, jumped out of the way as it fell, she was losing patience, becoming enraged, she told me I knew damn well we couldn’t move it like this, it was too heavy, we had to empty it, and, opening the drawers, she started scooping up my clothes in armfuls, which she threw on the floor, telling me to move my stuff, to get my fucking junk out of that commode.
Then she didn’t say anything, she fell completely silent, she watched me do as she’d asked, standing still, her head slightly lowered, a vacant look on her face, her impatience having subsided, or now held in check. Her rage gave way to sorrow, a cold sadness, a passive despondency, she was spent, she gave up, she left everything to me. I tried to calm her, appease her, I continued to empty the dresser, drawer by drawer, making piles of clothes of more or less equal size on the floor, T-shirts, pullovers, dress shirts, a wild heap of underwear, of gloves, of scarves, of winter hats, then other piles, smaller, spread thin, disparate and variegated, a belt, balled-up ties, my old nut-hugger bathing suit stretched at the waist, whose touching, ridiculous presence here was rather humiliating for me. It seemed like a pitiful display of ragged gear at a secondhand dealer’s stall, set up there in the dimness of the room, and there was something macabre in this display, as if the clothes, when not being worn, signified the absence or disappearance of their owner. And wasn’t that precisely what this was about, my disappearance, the gradual effacement of my presence in this room where I’d lived for several years?