A period began in which I was often grateful for having sat at that table in a café next to the Musée de l’Homme. The Pétrements were my only friends. I saw Simone a few times in cafés and squares, but she would not return to my studio, not even to retrieve her last belongings. Sandrine, meanwhile, resented my distance and paid in kind. I spent weekends between the radio and my books, going out for a walk when the walls started to close in on me. Paris became a desert once again.
The new order of things was apparent even in my relations with Didier and Son. The file cards were boring and often I just didn’t feel like listening to the Orientalist rant about a broad gamut of French institutions. At the same time, I became tired of witnessing the couple’s arguments; they now felt comfortable enough in my presence not to hide their rough edges.
As the afternoons grew shorter I would head for the metro, where I’d see the exhausted faces of the passengers, with big dark bags under their eyes. In spite of its cachet, Paris was like any other place. Solitude was doled out everywhere and life did not offer consolations. Happiness seemed far away. I had no one despite the thousands of faces, the millions of hands.
I’d settle at a corner table in Au Chien Qui Fume. I’d always bring books, notebooks, and pens, but soon I would leave them behind and simply spend an hour smoking and looking around as I slowly sipped one or two espressos. I’d manage to feel something close to contentment. The constant activity on the street and watching the passersby had a pacifying effect. My mind wandered from one idea to another until I lost track of words altogether and found myself, for minutes at a time, essentially unconscious. These were the best moments, but all the same they left me feeling lost.
I began to paint again and would kill time sketching faces on pieces of cardboard that I’d bring in from the street. The walls of my studio became covered with eyes, looking at me, from numerous variations on the same head I persisted in drawing time and again. All sorts of marginal types—from actors who improvised their performances on the street to nocturnal loners at the bars in cafes—inhabited my fantasies and became, as it were, my traveling companions. I chronicled their fates without missing a detail, to justify my own.
When I’d been living this life for three months, I received a letter from Marie announcing her return. She begged me to go and get the key to her apartment at her aunt’s house, because she didn’t want to have to see her when she arrived. She also asked me to come pick her up at the airport. She would soon let me know the date we would see each other again.
This news became my salvation. I had the impression that something fundamental was changing. Marie and I would usually reinforce each other’s weaknesses, which, more than love or mutual understanding, had sealed our bond. From the moment I received her letter I did nothing but wait. The days and weeks became endless, and I was influenced obsessively by expectations along with hopes I couldn’t shake and which—against all common sense—I went on building around her arrival.
I cleaned her apartment as well as my own; I bought flowers that withered and which I had to keep replacing. I didn’t show up for the thesis seminar or for work, as if in this way I could make Marie arrive sooner. Finally, late one afternoon, after having checked my mailbox compulsively, I received a telegram. Marie was arriving in two days.
The imminent presence of the woman with whom I had, more often than not, experienced unpleasantness, provoked in me a wave of anxiety. Doubts about my situation, now stifled by the nervous concentration of waiting, occasionally shed light on what seemed to be a comedy of errors. But I couldn’t change my mind. It was impossible not to go pick her up at the airport, not to see her, not to have anything to do with the emotional commitment I had made. I could barely sleep that night, blaming myself violently, getting up to walk around the room in little straight lines within the small rectangle between the desk and the bed. I spent hours trying to avoid making myself even more miserable with the thought that I was awaiting humiliation.
At dawn, I found myself asleep at the table. I went to my bed and fell into it like a huge hulk, disgusted. I spent the rest of that day as if on a tightrope, enveloped in a deceptive calm. My fears had dulled my senses. I was still uneasy but could only half feel it. That night I had the mental space to hope I could be wrong. Maybe, despite my fear, nothing would happen. It wasn’t worth thinking about any further, I said to myself, smoking my nth cigarette. I had to go pick her up in the morning.
I saw her before she could catch sight of me amid the crowd. Her hair was again its natural color, but the haircut was different, with the part on the side. She was walking among travelers toward the exit, with steps that seemed too short and slow for her age, carrying a big bag. When she left the terminal, I saw that her eyes were looking for mine. By making a small movement in her direction I attracted her attention, and she ran to embrace me. We stood hugging each other tightly, trying to express the emotion we both needed.
We walked to the taxi station smiling and making prosaic statements about the good old days and about the temperature outside. In letters we had been endlessly eloquent, but now that we were within reach of each other, the mutual presence of our bodies kept us from putting two sentences together. In the taxi, with the city coming into view in the distance, revealing the outlines of its many tall buildings, we held each other’s hands and tried to relieve the reality of the silence. It was impossible to find words to say anything, even the obvious.
Arriving at her apartment on Rue de Sèvres was a relief. While Marie paid the taxi driver, I could move away, taking charge of the suitcases. I went up the steps first and opened the door. I let her enter the place she had abandoned months ago and went down to get the rest of the luggage. When I came back up, I told her I had bought some basic food items, including tea. I saw her move, like an old lady, toward the stove.
“And so?” I asked without being able to restrain myself any further.
“Well, as you can see. I’m back. I hope it’s all okay.”
This felt like a false start. The words weren’t going anywhere.
“You don’t look bad,” she said. “A little thin. Are you still seeing the Pétrements?”
“I go several times a week, but lately it hasn’t been so exciting.”
“Before, you were enthusiastic.”
“I know, but the work has become monotonous. Basically it’s like any other. There’s no doubt that Didier is a great guy and has been very generous with me, but I don’t know, I’m a little fed up.”
“Have you seen Sandrine?”
“Not much lately. I suppose she’s okay.”
Marie brought over the cups and a package of biscuits.
“Thanks for the tea,” she said, “and for everything else.”
“It was nothing,” I answered, but I knew that she was talking about something else. We took refuge behind the steam from the cups.
“And your friend? What’s her name? Simone?”
“We’re no longer together.”
“Ah, bon!”
“We see each other from time to time. It wasn’t a breakup, but rather a gradual separation, but that’s the end.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too. And you?”
“What?”
“Are you with someone?”
“No. Not right now.”
“Why’s that?”
“Believe me, it wasn’t the moment . . .”
“And how are you doing? I mean, obviously . . .”
“Better. Really much better, though at times I just don’t know what the problem is. But I had to return. I couldn’t stay there with my parents. And you know how mother is. What she did wasn’t right, even though she thought it was for my good. I’m no longer a child.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“I don’t know yet. For the moment, come back here to live. It’s possible that I might take some more classes but not till next year. I have to find a psychiatrist or an analyst. Mom got in touch with her contacts and I already have a few phone numbers, but I’d like to find someone on my own. I still have to figure some things out, to sort out what happened.”
We drank our tea in a silence that was no longer anxiety ridden.
“I am so grateful to you for what you’ve done for me,” she said. “Your patience and your understanding. I know that you didn’t have to do it. I had no right to expect it of you. I behaved very badly with you. And with others.”
“I did it because I wanted to.”
“I know. That’s why I am asking you to forgive me.”
For the first time since her arrival we looked at each other without feeling defensive.
“What do you want to do?” I asked.
“Go to bed with you.”
It was a rediscovery. I returned to a body I had not forgotten. The room we were in had witnessed so much misery that, despite the surrender with which we possessed one another, a patina of regrets remained. But it was preferable to ignore or rather to live with it, as if it were an illness, an incurable disease. In our mouths and hands, in the action of our muscles, there was something, despite everything, that retained a perverse, wilted flavor. After the act, when we cavorted with our legs entwined, on the verge of being overtaken by sleep, a poem by Ezra Pound came to my mind, as a kind of warning. Some time later I looked for it. Titled “Fratres Minores,” it said: “With minds still hovering above their testicles / Certain poets here and in France / Still sigh over established and natural fact / Long since discussed by Ovid. / They howl. They complain in delicate and exhausted metres / That the twitching of three abdominal nerves / Is incapable of producing a lasting Nirvana.”
We went down to have lunch at a fairly good restaurant. It was a bit late in the day and there were only a few customers. I remember I ordered a fish soup, Provençal-style. Through the windows flowed an afternoon whose yellow light was delicate. I could let myself feel the beauty of a Paris where passersby strolled unhurriedly. It felt good to be there. It felt good because I could remember my country and knew that there I would have found none of this: not the soup nor the people nor the extraordinary light nor the woman who faced me and who spoke to me as if nothing had happened between us could be on the streets of the city where I had grown up. Paris became a dream city again, the city it could sometimes be, when one could deal with loneliness and distance.
Slowly, cautiously, more out of habit than anything else, trying to convince myself that I wasn’t making a stupid mistake, I returned to Marie. We spent days talking, moving from the table to the bed, or from the bed to the street, from a crêperie to a movie theater, from the movie theater to a walk, or to sitting outside at a café. Our respective studios eliminated any sense of property boundaries between us and we could go to bed and wake up in either of them. Our days and hours were once again richly filled with games and complicities, set aside for so long. I had the impression that the Marie of the previous year had been an aberration, and yet I feared, with equal force, that this new life was a fantasy.
For over a week I devoted myself to her and did not go to work with Didier Pétrement. I had called to let him know the reason for my absence and he and Son kindly invited us to come to dinner. Simone had never wanted to go. She hadn’t been interested, didn’t feel comfortable in that world, and, rudely, had refused to come for even one visit.
At nightfall, Marie and I took the metro to Didier and Son’s house. Before we went in, Marie stopped at a pastry shop to buy raspberry tarts.
From the very first minute, she felt at ease. She chatted and made herself at home in the kitchen with Son while I talked with Didier in the study. We enjoyed a Vietnamese dinner with many dishes, and our conversation lasted as late as possible, until we had to run to the station to catch the last metro. While the women were clearing the plates and preparing herbal tea, Didier took me aside and, as he lit his pipe, blowing big puffs of smoke, he congratulated me on Marie. He was completely enchanted.
From that day on, there were many occasions when, after I’d spend the afternoon working with Didier, Marie would arrive at the couple’s house to prepare dinner with Son, or she would make us hurry to get to a movie in time, or a lecture with slides, given by some scholar who had lost himself in jungles or deserts. Marie even became interested in the work of Le Petit Vietnamien and read a long series of books Son lent to her. Her growing interest led her to meditation, and she considered the possibility of spending the next summer with me at Monsieur Nan’s Swiss community.
Everything seemed to be going wonderfully. Around that time, Marie’s mother traveled to the city and was favorably impressed with her daughter’s progress. For once, finally, she was pleasant and even showed some affection for me. Nevertheless, despite all the displays of happiness and peace of mind, something in me still held back from trusting Marie. I had no reason to, apparently. It seemed to be an irrational fear, disconnected from actual events, but the truth was that I couldn’t shake this insidious feeling. I was affectionate with Marie; I needed her complicit presence, her companionship; I enjoyed what we did and dreamed, but I remained alert, uneasy about a future I couldn’t envision.
My research interests were taking shape as a dissertation project. I worked with discipline and enthusiasm. I imagined returning to register at the university to earn another degree. Perhaps ethnology? Continuing to study was the way not to return to my country, a way to gain time to see if, in some way, I could remain in France. The city was, then, my world, and I wouldn’t have been surprised or displeased if anyone predicted that I would stay there.
One day, crossing Place Monge, I ran into Simone. Her hair was longer, and I realized, upon hugging her, that I had practically never seen her dressed in warm clothing. Somewhat self-consciously, we began a conversation in the square, which we then moved across to one of the cafés. We talked about the university where she was taking some course, about her father and cousins; I reminded her, knowing she would never come to get them, that, hidden in a bag in the bottom of the closet at my place, she had left some pieces of clothing and a few books. We quickly recovered our natural way of being together, laughing at each other over things that had happened to us or that we had done.
When we were served our second coffee and Simone was going for her fourth cigarette, I said: “You know, I have fond memories of you. I’m not sure I’m making myself clear. I remember you without any bitterness, without bad feelings.” My intention had been, compelled by the joy of seeing her, to communicate my feelings about the time that had been ours, but upon articulating it, I realized I was saying something else. In my words there was something more than my appreciation for the memories. I was declaring my love and, unbeknownst to Simone, comparing and contrasting her with Marie and, for the first time, finally figuring out what was bothering me. No word was innocent, of course, but, unlike other times, neither was there any ill intent in what I said.
“We had a good time,” she said, grabbing my hand. “My father always asks after you. He liked you. He always goes around saying that you were a great guy and always reminds me that you were my only boyfriend who was worth the trouble.”
“And what do you think?” My smile suggested playfulness and at the same time veiled my feelings.
“In spite of your many defects and a few of mine, I think that Monsieur Georges is right.”
I let myself look away toward any point in the square while I felt the light movements of her hand in mine. More than any other gesture, our hands touching expressed our connection.
After a few seconds she asked: “You’re with Marie, right?”
“Yes,” I said, stifling my doubt and pain.
“You think so?”
“It was obvious. Ça va bien?”
I let go of her hand and readjusted myself in the chair. I didn’t want to lie.
“On the surface, everything is going very well. Psychologically, she’s much better. We’re not living together, but, for all practical purposes, we might as well be.”
“So what’s the matter?”
“I don’t know. Now that I see you, I realize so many things.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Don’t get me wrong. That’s not what I’m saying, even though I know I’m saying it. I accept, I understand, what happened between us. I’m not asking you if we can get back together again. I admit that I miss you, and that, seeing you now, the distance between us hurts and I feel a knot in my throat. What I mean is that being with Marie always feels like carrying a dead weight, and she doesn’t realize it, or doesn’t want to. It’s the weight of past frustrations and everything that happened between us. Besides, it’s as if I know her so well that there is no space for discovery, for a hopeful new life.”
“You’re getting bored.”
“No, it’s not that. We get along well. There are many things I like, including how we are in bed. But I know her: I’m afraid this is not going to last, that what I have now is going to fall apart sooner or later, and I don’t want to be here then.”
“You’re afraid of losing her?”
“No, I’m afraid of finding her. Never, except now, here with you, have I been able to say it, but Marie broke something in me. I don’t trust her; I know she’s going to do it again and, despite the fact that everything seems to be going so well, I don’t want to be here with her again, and at the same time I can’t leave.”
We soon had to say good-bye.
“Can I call you sometime?” I asked. I was seeking an ally for when the disaster occurred.
“Of course.”
In front of the café, we hugged good-bye. My hands brushed over places I knew as a path to pleasure and Simone pushed me away, laughing.
The upsetting content of this conversation and the need to live each day with normality made me repress what I admitted to Simone. Marie was continuing to do well, meditating, regularly going to appointments with the psychiatrist, and telling me her dreams. She tried not to upset me more than was strictly necessary, and enjoyed our walks, talks, and lovemaking. Months passed. In June I finished the dissertation seminar and applied myself to advancing my research as much as possible during vacation. Didier was pleased with the work I did and was counting on me for other projects. I’d accompany him on his visits to museum directors and I know that he loved to enter those strongholds flanked with me as his “secretary.” Sometimes, when there was nothing much to do, we’d let the hours fly by, poking around bookstores or galleries of primitive and Oriental art. More than once, we ended up at the Jardin des Plantes, sitting on a bench under an immense plantain tree, near the entrance of the zoo, telling each other our life stories. Thus I found out that Son had fragments of machine-gun bullets in her legs and left hip, and that she slept badly. A son she had had with her first husband had died during a bombing and her spouse had not returned from the front. Pétrement, who had been a steadfast bachelor, had become interested in Son, who, fleeing the tragedy, had made it to Saigon and, as she knew some French, obtained work at the administrative offices of the Alliance. One thing led to the next, and Didier ended up marrying her and bringing her to France. Still, there were times when Son would sit before the altar, light the incense, and sing in a low voice to her little boy.
As the weather got warmer and the afternoons longer, I began to see the first disturbing changes in Marie. I’d listen to her talking on the telephone to her mother and I’d watch her become sugary sweet to the point of agreeing to a two-week vacation with her at a spa known for its medicinal waters. Marie had not consulted me. We had not figured out our plans, but I naturally expected that before making any decision, we’d discuss it first.
Almost immediately, gifts began to arrive: articles of clothing, a Sony Walkman, money to buy more nineteenth-century church chairs in an antique store. I knew the logic of bribery and its seductive game of reciprocity. One could sense the mother’s tentacles through her generosity, manipulating the situation so that she could take control. Now, as in the past, I passively played along. I would watch Marie open the packages, show off new garments, turning around in front of the mirror and then carrying on long transatlantic conversations. I grew more and more annoyed but dreaded precipitating the end. Marie was heading toward a place where there was no space for me.
The progression was slow but undeniable. Her mood changed. She’d spend the days without knowing what to do, selfishly using me or our friends to distract herself. I was becoming increasingly bitter over her whims and intolerance, the tiny and apparently arbitrary conflicts that always led to useless and endless talk at night, in which the major topics of envy, friction with others, or the meticulous analysis of some unappreciated detail of her body, revealed the steady progress of her anxiety. One morning we had an absurd argument about some dirty dishes; one Sunday, when I couldn’t go out because I had to prepare a written text for my thesis director, she said she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life with someone who lived only for books. Ironically, she was the one who, in her happiest moments, encouraged my pursuits and urged me (and I don’t doubt her sincerity) to devote myself to research and writing. Her eating habits became obsessive. She’d spend days devouring goat cheese and dry bread. Or she’d exorbitantly buy numerous cans of asparagus, open three at a time and, without putting them on a plate or accompanying them with some condiment, oblivious to everything around her, she’d keep munching and downing them as if they were French fries. Before, when she’d go to her therapy sessions, she’d talk about what she was discovering. Now she didn’t say a word.
These changes couldn’t have happened at a worse time. I was writing the first pages of my thesis, plus the stories and reviews I was sending to Santiago’s journal in Spain, and I couldn’t even withdraw to work in peace. Marie would arrive with her monologue or a dense silence. She’d spend a while reading magazines and silly novels, and then I’d feel her eyes shooting darts at me. She’d interrupt, asking me to open cans or bottles, and she’d try to initiate conversations that were going nowhere, which disrupted my work. Everything would end in a fight, with her grabbing her bag and leaving abruptly. From the window, I’d watch her disappear in the direction of Rue de Vaugirard. I’d go to the stove and prepare coffee. Now unable to work, I’d drink it listening to the radio.
She fled so as not to face what was really going on. On her wrist was the scar of the knife cut. It was almost a straight line that could have passed for the mark of any accident, if not for its location. This hard fact was always there, in view. Marie had gotten used to talking with her hands together, the palm of her right hand covering her left wrist. She would wear, besides, various silver and leather bracelets. Hiding it seemed worse to me than the scar itself, because her motive seemed to be not vanity but shame. Her mother had suggested that she take advantage of the already-planned trip to New York to see a plastic surgeon. It was none of my business, but the fact that she contemplated the idea of erasing the scar disturbed me. It was a kind of reverse scarring. Marie thus would inscribe her mother’s power and will upon her body.
I kept quiet. I wouldn’t have explained myself well, and I wouldn’t have been heard. I got to the point of preferring that she’d just leave. That way I’d be able to work, without anxiety or distractions.
At the beginning of July she announced the day she was leaving for New York. Afterwards she would go with her family to some vacation spot in Europe. I was faintly invited to the latter, but both of us knew I had to work on my thesis and with Pétrement and that I had no money for travel.
I took her to the airport. A few days before leaving, she had doubts. She wondered if it wouldn’t be better, instead, for us to go on a spiritual retreat with Monsieur Nan. We were treating each other better, and the activities we were sharing somewhat recovered the tone of the good times. I even thought that the trip didn’t have to lead to catastrophe. All of us have a right to our ups and downs, to lose our way, to err. Perhaps Marie needed a reunion with her mother to reassert herself. We said good-bye in good spirits, promising to write often.
The first days were good. I recovered my space and worked easily and contentedly. Then the solitude began to weigh on me, and I had a hard time filling the hours, even with the lure of work. I exchanged long letters with Santiago and Isabel in which, among other things, we promised to meet up again, either in Alicante or in Paris. Almost a year had passed since we met each other in Spain and the pleasure of our contact was still fresh. But, after all, a reunion depended almost exclusively on my slim resources. Without family and without friends—the Pétrements were traveling and were going to spend some days with Le Petit Vietnamien—I found myself killing time in parts of the city far from my studio, half-exhausted by the heat, flipping through boxes of books on sale in small neighborhood bookstores or looking at the windows of stores that were selling puppets or enamel figurines. I visited many jewelry stores in search of a cheap watch, because the old mechanism in the one my father had given me years ago had stopped. I’d check out, while walking or sitting on park benches, the bustling of the tourists and the beauty of the women coming to the city from all over the globe. I surrendered, like Parisians who couldn’t travel, to the irritating noise of their happiness.
I received brief, anecdotal letters from Marie, in which she told me about her theater and opera outings, about the weekends spent at the beach house, or a dinner in a luxurious Russian restaurant, in which her father got so drunk that he hired a band of Gypsy musicians. In my room I’d answer her, writing on the pinewood desk that was stained with ink, paint, wine, and coffee. It pleased me to leave these traces of my existence, which little by little were becoming a palimpsest. Paris was teaching me to discover minimal beauty, to honor these findings as a way of validating life.
One evening, after the postman’s second visit, I found a letter from Marie that filled less than one page. It contained two pieces of news. She said that she couldn’t write anymore because she had a lot of pain from the surgery, and that in three days she was leaving with her parents for Portugal. She would write again when she had recovered and knew her new address. The brevity of this bulletin left me uneasy. I felt sure that she had gone too far and that everything was about to fall apart. It was useless to think that I was fantasizing all this.
The days kept going by without further news of Marie. At some point, I could no longer chalk it up to the post office’s inefficiency. Marie, for some reason I didn’t know, but whose dark tone I could anticipate, did not want to write to me. I felt a whole range of emotions, ending up with disbelief, anger, and depression. I knew that, somewhere in Europe, Marie was betraying me. My mind fought to reach other conclusions, but my certainty grew stronger and more and more humiliating.
I stopped working on my thesis. I had twenty-four hours of the day to myself, but I couldn’t work. I’d waste time on absurd activities, like washing the worn-out rug in the studio with my hands or throwing a ball made of socks in the air, again and again. I grew so desperate that I went to see Sandrine to ask her point-blank if she knew anything about her friend. When she showed me the postcard from Portugal written in a hotel in the Algarve, the news hit me like a punch in the face. As I walked out, I felt as if molten lead had been poured inside me. Once again, with my fear of loneliness, I had created my own personal form of hell.
This time, I didn’t even feel like walking. I dragged my feet to an anonymous café in the Fifteenth arrondissement, where I had only been once before, soon after arriving in the city. At that time I spoke very bad French and I remembered, as I sat at one of the tables, how difficult it was to order anything when my accent was almost incomprehensible and I didn’t recognize most of the dishes. A long history separated me from those days. The city and its culture had shaped me, and I had found here a space for my life’s labors. It was difficult to imagine living somewhere else than this world of pedestrians inhabiting the city as if it were an extension of their apartments. But that afternoon, in that café, I suddenly thought of returning. Nothing, nobody, now was keeping me from returning home. I needed to decide where home was, though, since up until that moment, mine was in the Impasse de l’Astrolabe. Over there, far away, was the island I came from. I never denied it; it had always been my hallmark of identity. I had always defended Puerto Rico in a world that didn’t care to know us. But I knew it was a hole in the wall, and that very little of what was done in Paris could be reproduced in my native city. But I couldn’t take it anymore. I had no more strength to continue fighting, and even more significant, I didn’t feel strong enough to be near Marie. Being lonely and poor didn’t help, but Marie was, so to speak, the straw that broke the camel’s back. In that café, during the hour and half I spent there, the notion that my time in the city had come to an end, quietly took root in me. It was like an epiphany, produced by a contradictory rush of emotions: failure, hope, and willpower all rolled into one compelling impulse.
Night and dawn found me on the streets and boulevards of the city, struggling with a decision I’d already made but couldn’t quite swallow. Between the bridges of the Seine and the stairs of Saint-Sulpice, I walked, rehearsing countless versions of a single thought. I suffered the pain and indignity of abandonment. The city had been mine, but its people had not. I came to realize this, walking along the dark gates of the Luxembourg Gardens or watching the crowds pour out of the movie theaters on Boulevard du Montparnasse. I couldn’t continue living as if I were reading a book. My world had been made of paper, and in it the humans, the French, had been held at a thoughtless distance. This was the flip side of the story of those years. It’s possible that at certain ages one comes to earth-shattering realizations. It is possible, because that night I recognized that I had no choice but to return.
I couldn’t entirely justify, in words, my decision to leave Paris. It was something I will never be able to completely understand—perhaps associated with the lost and eternal world of childhood. The limitations of my life with Marie were also perhaps the sign of another point of no return. I will never be able to explain satisfactorily why I left the city. I left, in fact, because I couldn’t explain it.
The next day I got up late and, amazingly, my resolution was still firm. Daylight, the streets, the people had a unique lightness or lack that was a liberating release from some great weight. I called San Juan. My family agreed to send money for the flight and for the trunk that I would send by ship. I didn’t want to visualize what awaited me. I had made a decision I could not undo. In the following two weeks I sold what I could and went to meet with my thesis director, who tried to convince me that when I found myself back in San Juan, I would realize the magnitude of my error. Before a few final chores, since there were still a few days remaining before my trip, I went to Marie’s apartment and left off a letter in which I asked her to return my studio key to the landlord, thus terminating the rental. At the end there was a good-bye without any explanation. I spent several days free of all tasks and obligations, living in a room with only a mattress and a pile of clothing and a few random things.
I called Simone and we made a date to meet at a café. I spoke for quite a while before giving her the news. She was sensible enough not to try and poke her nose into my life, but she invited me to her house one more time, presumably because her father wanted to say good-bye.
I came with two bottles of strong wine from Algeria. We all prepared the food together, as we always had, and consumed it at a leisurely pace, engrossed in a conversation mixed with joy, nostalgia, and heartbreak. There was a momentous toast by Simone’s father, in which he expressed all his feelings, from the sadness that my departure inspired to a drunken and disillusioned climax about not having me as a son-in-law. When it was late, and we had no hope of catching the last train, Georges fell asleep in his chair and Simone took me to her room, where we made love and talked until it began to get light outside the windows. I got dressed, as I wanted to leave before breakfast. After those hours with her, she was playing at unraveling my plan to leave. I realized how much I loved her, but I knew that she would not fill the void compelling me to leave the city. I should not hold onto anyone.
Wrapped in a sweater, Simone accompanied me to the staircase landing. Our embrace left us looking at each other with teary eyes. I heard her voice cracking when I reached the front door to the building. “Bon chance!” She was wishing me good luck as if I were going to an exam.
Sometime later I would find out, in one of her letters, that at that time she was going out with a man who would abandon her when she became pregnant.
I purposely left the visit to the Pétrements for one of the last days before my departure. I knew that if anyone could change my mind, that person would be Didier. Conscious of this, I told him of my decision in front of Son. I thought that her presence would soften his reaction. Didier stood up and turned his back to me.
“You’ve gone completely crazy.” It was the first time he addressed me as tu in the familiar form. “A man doesn’t put himself through such things for women.”
“Didier,” Son interceded, “please, don’t be so rude.”
“So, can you tell me why this fool is going?”
“Because he has to go. That’s all. The French don’t understand this.”
“There’s nothing to understand. Why do you come here today to present us with a done deed? Why didn’t you come before, to consult me?”
“Because he knew that you were going to give him this speech,” said Son. “That you were going to turn into some sort of horrible father.”
Didier made an irritated gesture while he lit his pipe. He walked around his office avoiding the piles of books and papers until he stood facing the window.
“It’s what always happens,” he said. “Nothing lasts. You, after all, must be master of your own mistakes, your own stupidities. Forgive me for saying it like that. Tell me if there is something we can do to change your mind.”
“There’s nothing to be done, Didier,” I said. “I must go.”
The light coming in the window gave the smoke surrounding his shoulders a bluish density. We remained in silence for a long time; then we watched him go over to a cabinet, take out a bottle and three glasses.
“Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps you’re both right, even though you’re the biggest fool I’ve known in my life. But it doesn’t matter anymore. Go home knowing that Son and I are your friends.”
Son came over to kiss me and Didier gave me a hug that made my spine creak.
In the little time I had left in the city I saw them twice. We dined, had lunch, walked, and let the hours pass chatting about any old thing at a café table.
The day of my departure, I took the baggage and suitcases downstairs and gave the mailbox one last look. There was nothing. I got into the taxi and we went along the boulevards before getting on the highway. I was leaving everything I had come to find. Maybe this was nothing, but it had a tremendous weight.
After handing them my luggage at the airlines counter, I bought, with my last francs, a few packages of Gauloises and walked toward the gates. I sat on a bench and waited a little over a half hour watching the passengers move around. I wanted to savor the very last drop of France. When I saw that it was already time to board, I stood up, feeling my nerves tightening in my stomach.
Then, unexpectedly, I ran into Didier and Son.
“Tiens, mon vieux, c’est pour toi.”
My companion of so many days had placed a package in my hands.
“Don’t forget us,” said Son.
After passing through security, I walked backwards, until I lost sight of them.
I opened the package a few minutes after the plane took off. It contained the first slightly faded edition of Pierre Plon’s translations of myths and songs. On the first page there was a dedication. It said: “To Didier Pétrement with whom I lived the greatest years of my life.”