We started on our way, holding the dresser barely above the ground as we moved forward, but we failed to make it through the door on the first try. We had to put it down again and tip it on its side, lift it at an angle to pass through the doorframe and reach the hallway. Bent by the weight of the dresser, Marie in a T-shirt and me in my shirt and no pants, we shuffled down the hallway wearing next to nothing. Marie wasn’t speaking, but she’d calmed down, she was silent, careful, focused on the task at hand, she jutted out her bottom lip and blew a stray hair out of her eyes. She looked at me pleadingly (but there was nothing I could do, my hands were full too), and then she smiled at me, she gave me a shy, complicit smile from across the dresser, her whole face beaming, maybe the first time she’d smiled at me in five months. Our eyes met and we considered the absurdity of the situation, the madness of trying to haul this piece of junk to the ground floor in the middle of the night. We continued to smile at each other as we shuffled down the hall, our two bodies on each side of the dresser moving in unison, bound together, united, close to one another, as though we were dancing, borne along by the dresser’s own force which, like a song or tune, imposed its rhythm on us and dictated our speed, with only a couple of feet separating us, joined in the intimate promiscuity of this impossible task. There was a mutual feeling of complicity, of affection even, an attraction drawing us together, communicated through our eyes and spreading down to our hands, an invisible pull, a sort of magnetic charge, strong, powerful, ineluctable, as if, during the five months of our separation, an irresistible swell of emotion had been rising in us undetectably that could only end with us in each other’s arms this night. Marie’s pain that night could only be assuaged with her in my arms, she had an irrepressible, physical need to be comforted, to be caressed and held, to feel loved, cared for, and perhaps I also needed this, the fear and concern I’d felt this night gave me the same need to hold and caress her since the moment I stood by her at the window, when I was incapable of taking her into my arms immediately to console her, hold her body tightly against mine. We stopped there in the hallway, put the dresser down at our feet, and we were looking at each other in the half-light, speechless, but we understood each other, we’d always understood each other. I loved her, yes. It may be very imprecise to say I loved her, but nothing could be more precise.
I’m not sure if I was the one who approached her first, gently closing the small gap that separated us, or if it was she who had tacitly beckoned me on by taking the first step in my direction, but we were facing each other now, motionless in the half-light of the hallway, silent, we were looking at each other with infinite intent. I thought we were going to kiss, but we didn’t, our tongues or lips didn’t touch, we did nothing more than stand there with our bodies pressed together in the dark, our cheeks and necks grazing, like trembling horses, frightened and touched. Without venturing anything bolder, our hands filled with lightness, with reserve, with delicacy and consideration, as if we were dangerously brittle, or our skin scorching hot, and our touching unthinkable, taboo, we barely grazed shoulders and touched each other with only the tips of our fingers, our eyes wild and our bodies sensitive to every touch, I nuzzled my nose into the crease of her neck to breathe in the scent of her skin. Then, like rushing water held behind a dam for too long and suddenly released, we threw ourselves violently at one another, entangling our bodies, locking together in complete abandon of body and soul, holding each other tightly, feeling the warmth, comfort, and consolation of the other, our arms appearing suddenly to be many, hurried, flung every which way, hands soft, feverish, groping wildly, I squeezed the back of her shoulders, ran my hands over her cheeks, her forehead, through her hair. I touched her cheeks gently with my hands, and I looked her in the eyes. The hands and the eyes, the only two things that matter in life, in love, in art.
Our bodies entangled and our eyes closed, we caressed each other frantically, but we weren’t kissing, we couldn’t kiss, a sort of ban prevented us from doing so, an unspoken rule, imperious and invisible, too many things were converging at this moment, too many emotions, such as pain, concern, and love, all mixing together in our hearts, there must have been a slight lull, a pause to catch our breath, she swept a loose curl from her face, and I saw then a wild gleam in her eyes, a look of freedom, of lust. Her back arched against the wall, her thighs bare under her white T-shirt, Marie was challenging me with her eyes — there was a sort of defiance in her gaze, something taunting, sexual, perverse, as if willing and ready for anything. She leaned back against the wall as if to invite me, and I pressed my body to hers, feeling her pubic hairs through the threadbare fabric of her T-shirt. She had nothing on under her T-shirt, and I slid my hand up her shirt, felt the smooth skin of her quivering stomach under my fingers, our bodies fused together, caught in the moment, she moaned as she dug her face passionately into my neck, her thighs were hot, moist, I caressed her stomach and slid a finger into her vagina, gently, and a shiver, hot, wet, sweet, ran up my spine.
It lasted only a minute before Marie slipped away gracefully, she slid out of my arms and was gazing at me tenderly in the half-light. Tears had run down her cheeks when I was holding her, and she hadn’t tried to hold them back, nor had she dried her eyes, they were silent tears, almost invisible, tears that had streamed down her cheeks as naturally as a heartbeat or a breath of air. Marie, stunning, her eyes welling with tears in the half-light, Marie, torn between contradictory impulses, a passionate desire competing with her self-restraint, Marie who’d had as much need to give herself to me as to keep her distance, Marie who’d needed to hold me as tight as possible for comfort and consolation and who’d put up no fight against the physical desire she felt rising in her when I’d taken her in my arms, Marie who’d drawn me to her with that defiant look, as if challenging me to touch and caress her, no sooner had she felt all this than she broke away from my arms, whose clasp she undid with care, as though she’d simply realized the impossibility of loving each other at this moment.
I hadn’t realized it right away, not immediately, nor shortly thereafter, but much later the thought came to mind, in a flash and by chance, in a sort of panic and shock — in spite of the difficulty, impossibility even, of putting into words what had transpired, what, in the course of my life, had occurred to me in a natural sequence of silent and ineluctable facts, but which, once articulated, suddenly became incomprehensible, or shameful, as, perhaps, certain homicides evoked before an Assize Court, seemingly plausible acts when committed, become shocking, unspeakable, abstract with the passing of time and once placed under the implacable light of words — that this was the second time, that night, that I’d stuck my finger into a woman’s body.