Outside the door to the men’s toilets, Mr. Merlinter is standing in front of her. You want to go away? He observes her with impatient eyes, which blink repeatedly as though he wanted to change the image on his retina that obstinately remains the same, in spite of his obvious efforts. This morning she happened to pass him in the hall and rather than going to see him in his office, which would have felt like an official visit and forced her boss to adopt an attitude appropriate to his rank, that is to say, busy and unbending, she preferred to approach him before he disappeared into the toilets, thereby offering the lovely possibility of keeping their talk short. Even though he isn’t supposed to involve himself in the private lives of his subordinates, Mr. Merlinter has not been able to resist the temptation. Feigning an air of detachment, he had to enquire just what she was intending to do with herself during the time off he might or might not give her. I need a holiday. She used the magic word on purpose. All the girls in her office say they need a holiday. Impossible therefore for him to fault her for the uniqueness of her request or the abnormality of her behavior. As well as blinking, Mr. Merlinter’s eyes are now darting back and forth between her and the toilet door handle. How many days? Four. She said the right number. The day before, after packing the previous tenant’s red and white bag, she had rehearsed her speech, so as not to be tempted to reduce it when confronted by her boss’ inquisitive look. Four. . Mr. Merlinter half-opens the door as if to confer with the people who might be inside. Mustn’t flinch now. Mr. Merlinter has one foot on the tiled floor. Four is fine, but even so check into whether you have that much time coming to you. Of course, she says. The door has already closed behind him.
She hesitates. Then, on the day before the trip, she decides to ask one of her co-workers, a fairly calm and courteous woman who sits to her right, if she has ever been to London. The woman ponders for a few seconds, surprised to be consulted on the matter or perhaps surprised that she is being consulted at all. It’s nice if you like to walk, there are monuments, but the people aren’t much fun and it rains all the time. No matter, they’ll stay indoors. In bars, which won’t be much of a change for them, or at the hotel, if in fact he’s planning for them to stay at a hotel. There must be plenty of museums, he’ll certainly want to go to them. She won’t refuse, even if she always ends up feeling painfully bored in such places, burdened by a sense of obligation to admire all the works on display. As for monuments, she’s not too keen on those either. Big Ben, that’s the name that comes up whenever London is mentioned. She imagines that it must be more or less what the Eiffel Tower is to Paris. She makes a mental note to slip her umbrella into the sports bag. One of the ribs has come loose, but it still keeps the rain off pretty well. They’ll just have to huddle together. He’ll put his arm around her neck, she’ll slip hers around his waist. A fine and beautiful cliché, worthy of the best romances of her age, which she will be all too happy to imitate.
That same evening, she checks the contents of the sports bag for the fifth and final time, and adds the umbrella. She is lifting her leg to step into a special London-departure bath, and just like that the telephone starts to ring. She rushes forward with little steps, holding one hand over her crotch, supporting her breast with an arm, stark naked in the middle of the living room. Yes hello, it’s Olivier Chedubarum. Talkative, in high spirits. She eventually understands that the photographs are ready and that he wants to show them to her. I’m off to London tomorrow. How she has adored saying those words, with a hint of weariness in her voice, as if it were all one to her, as if it were no more than a dull, routine occurrence that she was obliged to mention. It’s her revenge, a way of lifting her nose at the entire world, which continues to play its tricks, uncaring, and which has now delegated a single spokesman to her in the person of Olivier Chedubarum. With him? Yes, with him. She’s said it, she’s in heaven. Now someone will know they’re going away, alone, the two of them together. Olivier Chedubarum suggests meeting up that very evening so he can give her copies of the best photos. She hesitates, she has to get up early the next morning. But at that moment everything seems so perfect that she has no desire to deny herself anything or to act for purely rational reasons. A last little outing to mark the occasion, to celebrate her departure. The water in the bath is untouched and cold when she approaches the Père-Pinard, a café on the Place des Halles at seven o’clock.
She recognized the phrase. It’s my birthday, I’m forty today. She imagines. . the idea delights her; she’s about to say to him, look, I know you, realizing that he said it on purpose to pull her leg, to make a joke about the past, to invite her along to the café. She turns around: Momo isn’t talking to her but to a tall, fine-looking girl who is firmly shaking her head. And when his eyes sweep over the place where she is standing, he doesn’t stop, doesn’t notice her. Point taken. That day, Momo had stumbled onto her by chance, because she had been the one to turn around, not because of who she was. She doesn’t dare go over; she keeps on walking in the direction of the café, trying hard not to think about it any more.
A cardboard folder is on the table. Olivier Chedubarum stands up, she sits, the waiter sets down two glasses of wine in front of them, the file is opened. What Olivier Chedubarum then shows her causes her to gape. She sees a sister, a cousin, a likeness, but it’s not her, not fully. The look in the eyes is hers, but not the expression, which is fierce, severe, and doesn’t correspond to anything in herself. Perhaps others have always seen her like this and she simply hasn’t known it. She picks up one of the photos to study it more closely. There is a small luminous dot, slightly out of focus, the drop of water that had landed on her upper chest and left a trace on the film before it fell. The tomatoes are the tomatoes she had seen in Olivier Chedubarum’s hands. And yet her face is not the face she thought she had presented to the photographer. Gone is the sense of well-being she had experienced in the glow of the enormous lamps. Nevertheless, it had seemed to last for a long time, long enough to be captured on film. You don’t like them? It doesn’t seem to be me. Olivier Chedubarum bursts out laughing. You look good, though. A nice way to say the image flatters her, that she looks better in it than in real life. That’s not what I mean. But how to explain it to him? She wonders if the result would have been the same if the pictures had been taken by a different photographer. It might be Olivier Chedubarum’s eye that has transformed her, but how can she be sure? Actually, you can keep them. Olivier Chedubarum shakes his head. I’ll end up believing you think I’m a bad photographer. She doesn’t know a thing about photography, she’s in no position to judge, it’s not that, it’s just. Take them anyway, stick them in a drawer, one day you’ll wind up liking them. She shrugs her shoulders. After all, she’s off to London tomorrow, that’s what counts, the photographs are of no importance. To please Olivier Chedubarum, she tucks the folder away in her bag. He then orders another round and starts telling her about how he covered the student riots in May ’68 and managed to have his first photographs published in the national press.