The ringing of the phone pulls her from the depths of sleep. She is stretched out on the sofa between two pairs of bronze arms and bronze legs. With much difficulty, she extends her hand to catch hold of the receiver and stop the noise in her ears. She doesn’t say “hello,” doesn’t have a single drop of saliva left in her mouth. How are you? For the first time, he has said it with feeling. No longer is it mere politeness or a verbal tic: he wants to know how she is. The expression is no longer a screen, it conveys genuine intent. For the first time, she doesn’t parrot back like a fool, OK. She gives a real answer to his real question. I have a terrible headache. Even as it sinks in that he is there, at the other end of the line, that he has called her back. She is surprised, but she tells herself it couldn’t have been any other way. The storm has passed, their bond has held. The forgiveness is tacit, the hard feelings have never been explicit or implicit, there never were any. It’s the start of intimacy. Two people who know the same thing, without having to put it into words. The conversation that follows is the one they haven’t had yet: What time is it? Seven o’clock. I’m going to be late. Did I wake you up? I’m glad you did, I didn’t think I’d slept for so long. You needed it. And you, did you get some sleep? Not much. He must have faced facts. What has happened between them isn’t trivial. He hurt her, and it has affected him more than he could have imagined. Despite all his past efforts, he can no longer delude himself about the essence of what exists between them. Ignoring it is now more awkward than acknowledging it. And he acknowledges it, as she just understood from their conversation. I’ll call you, he says. The words are the same, the intent has changed: she believes him. As she puts down the phone, her whole body is electrified. Tonight she will go to the theater alone, but that doesn’t matter anymore.
She is at the microphone. She reads out: The TER 47433 service, bound for Beauvais, departing at 11:22 am, will leave from platform number 7. The TGV 7040 from Lille will arrive at platform J. Attention please, attention please, please note the change of platform. This regional service will be stopping at Amiens, Lamotte-Brebière, Daours, Corbie, Heilly, and Méricourt-Ribemont. Her voice fills the entire station, soaring over the platforms, the halls, sailing into corners, crashing into glass walls. She is present everywhere, and yet no one recognizes her. There is a little trick she does to avoid stumbling over her words: she focuses on what she is saying without focusing on the fact that she is saying it. Never fails. The travellers soak up the information she sends them through the invisible loudspeakers. She is perfectly anonymous, talking to everyone and yet addressing no one. Occasionally she dreams that one of them won’t head straight for the taxi rank, won’t rush down the stairs into the métro, won’t revert quite so quickly to his habitual self the moment he steps off the train, and that instead he’ll stop and tell her about what he saw during the course of his trip. All she knows about the towns and villages to which they travel are their names and positions on the map. That is all she has to picture them. Her own journey goes only so far as announcing destinations, navigating between syllables of names, pronouncing numbers and letters correctly. On the rare occasions when she has taken a train, she experienced the same sense of misgiving that a doctor would who has to undergo medical treatment. And then, in order to get away, you need to know where to go; you need a destination. A motive is what tears through the protective layer of the everyday. Departure is an upheaval, which can only be calmed by the pleasure of experiencing the desired place. She would have liked to travel everywhere; in other words, nowhere. But while she may never have had a valid reason to leave, she now has a good excuse to stay.
After walking out of the station, she stops in at a café. She wants to celebrate their reunion. The waiter is surly, but in her current state she could put up with insults and still be smiling. Hot chocolate, its sweet taste, comfort, a childhood treat. To prolong the pleasure, she drinks it with a small spoon. Everything has yet to start; all is held in suspense. Full of promise. In bud. The horizon is clear, the best can be imagined. He has just offered her the place she has been trying to occupy for a long time, by her own crude and ineffectual means, without ever daring to demand it. She knows that everything will be more complicated later. But for now, what happens next is nothing compared to the present, which overwhelms all else, encompassing both past and future. A happy anticipation of what she now has no more reason to fear. Behind the window, pedestrians are walking by in waves. She passes the time following several of them with her eyes, testing the force of her gaze. The challenge: to pierce through the layers of thoughts and preoccupations that cut them off from the world around them. The rules: to use only your eyes. The purpose of the experiment: to determine the time it takes for them to turn their heads in her direction. The findings: first of all, there are those who are impossible to reach, who forge ahead without noticing anything. Wasted effort, they’re the sort who will never respond. Then there are those who react at once and yet seem to be the most absent. Their heads jerk round suddenly, as if their skulls were attached to a wire on which she’d given a sharp tug. They gaze straight at her, forcing her to withdraw into herself as if she’d been bitten. Lastly, there are the ones she has to make an effort with and who make her feel as if she’s fishing. At the last minute, just as they’re about to disappear from sight, they turn their heads, slowly, as though thinking someone had called their name. They don’t always see her, but they look in the right direction. They are her favorites because they belong to the same category she does. Now that she had finished warming up, she turns her attention to the people inside the café. Easier because no one is moving, more risky because she is in the same room. Around her, the tables are empty. The customers are crowded up at the bar, cigarette in mouth, glass in hand, words on lips. The waiter, resting one elbow on the zinc counter, is searching for wondrous worlds in the cracks of the ceiling. She starts with the hunched backs. No luck. A woman did move her head, even almost saw her, but midway let herself get distracted by something out in the street. And then, all of a sudden, a bite. She had barely begun to stare at him when the man spotted her.