9. We find comfort in food, and it’s a terrible mistake

I leap out of bed almost as soon as the gray dawn’s gloomy light begins to filter into the room. I give Ange a cautious glance. He’s not asleep (has he slept at all?), and he’s staring blankly at the wall. A rush of love and sympathy throws me against him. I take his head between my hands, ignoring his attempts to pull free, I kiss his lips, smelling a strange odor of blood and putrefaction. He gently pushes me away and wraps himself up in the sheet in such a way, I tell myself, that if he does fall asleep again I’ll never be able to pull it away and tend to his wound without waking him.

What exactly am I not supposed to see? And why does he imagine I’m hoping to see it, whatever it is? Doesn’t he know me, doesn’t he know I always want to know as little as possible of things that fill me with horror?

I force myself to say, “Ange, you know as well as I do, you must see a doctor.”

“There’s no need for that now,” he says listlessly.

“What does that mean?” I say, deeply unsettled.

“Just that there’s no need. There’s nothing more to say,” says Ange.

I can feel the mounting annoyance in his voice, the irascibility I find so startling. I hurry to answer:

“You think you’ve understood something I still haven’t grasped, and what I think is that you’re trying to protect me, and that’s why you’ve turned so hard and mysterious. But you must know, there’s nothing I can’t bear to learn, and I might even know everything already, my darling Ange. You don’t have to protect me.”

Am I sure of that?

“Those are just words,” says Ange, in a tone of infinite sadness.

He goes on: “Be careful, you talk too much.”

Then he closes his eyes, rudely, to cut all this short. That last sentence sounded less like a piece of advice than a threat.

I’m speechless. I can’t help shaking Ange by his shoulder, even though his brow immediately furrows in pain. For the first time a sort of rage now comes over me too, and when I see him wince I simply think: Am I not suffering too, at being treated so unfairly?

I spit back:

“And what do I say when I’m talking too much? Because I feel like the only one around here who hasn’t figured out what it is that’s so terribly momentous! Oh, but I’m not going to spend all my time begging forgiveness for everything I’m evidently somehow doing wrong,” I say, but my anger is already subsiding, and as I look at Ange’s haggard face and gray eyelids I wonder, tormented, how to go about saving him when he doesn’t want to be saved.

I hear a series of resounding knocks on the front door.

“The neighbor,” Ange murmurs.

“This time,” I say, “he’s staying outside.”

Troubled, Ange begins to stir.

“No, no, come on now, obviously you have to let him in.”

His whisper is fretful, with that edge of irritation again. Between his half-open eyelids, his gaze is veiled and exasperated, devoid of all affection.

Now the door is rattling from the blows. I leave the bedroom, undo the chain, and throw the door wide open.

“I don’t suppose,” he says amiably, “that you’ve eaten the ham I brought yesterday?”

“No,” I say.

“No matter, I have some more here, freshly sliced. And also, look,” he says, cheerful and eager, “I’ve got bread, nice warm bread that I kneaded and baked myself, and then some plum marmalade I made in my own kitchen—forgive me for belaboring the point—and I’ve got some butter for you too, since I wasn’t sure you would have any, and all this is for you and your husband, and in all sincerity, you’d make me so happy if you deigned…if you would be so good… Besides, we already agreed…”

“My husband asked me not to kick you out,” I say.

I try to put on the weary, sullen look that I think is the only thing capable of repelling the detestable intimacy he’s trying to slip into every tiny intonation. And all the while the warm scent of the bread is making me weak, almost grateful. I’m so hungry my lips are trembling. I step aside so he can come in. On his way past he looks up and gives me a quick glance, equal parts triumph and submission.

He’s wearing filthy old corduroy overalls and a Columbia University sweatshirt. He goes straight to the kitchen. He feels perfectly at home, he thinks he knows he’s not going to be thrown out again, he thinks he’s earned his place here. He sets his provisions down on the table, invites me to sit with a broad gesture untouched by irony, then turns toward the coffee machine, opens the cabinet where the cups are kept, and takes the coffee from its drawer, all very precisely, with the brisk self-assurance of someone who knows exactly what he has to do and adapts his every movement to that goal.

“I have to leave for school soon,” I say.

“Yes, yes,” he says, “that’s fine.”

But how can this be, how can he be here making the coffee just like Ange used to do, how can he be here so at ease, victorious and subservient at the same time, this man we could scarcely bear to glimpse for a few seconds a day?

“We have no need of a servant, you know,” I say.

“And a friend? You don’t need a friend?” he says, his tone light but serious, his back still turned.

Appalled by his impudence, I say, “Ange and I have always gotten along very nicely without friends. You can take my word for it. And to be perfectly frank, the fact is we find friends a nuisance, since you ask.”

I pull off a handful of bread. A wisp of steam floats up from the torn loaf. I stuff the piece into my mouth, and the taste is so delicious and comforting that a painful tingle drills into my jaw, my cheeks, the corners of my eyes. And yet, I tell myself, and yet he made this bread with his hands. He sits down facing me, cuts a slice of bread, spreads it with a thick layer of the butter he’s brought, a deep yellow block freckled with tiny droplets of water, and smears it with plum marmalade.

“Here, if I may, eat this,” he says, holding it out with exaggerated courtliness.

He gets up to pour me a big cup of coffee. I distastefully note his fat, flabby hands, his dirty nails. Gray whiskers pepper his face. And, when he forgets himself, his eyes are so cold that they make me afraid.

And yet he made this bread.

He jumps up and says, “Now, let’s have a look at our patient.”

“He doesn’t want anyone coming near him,” I say.

He gives me a confident little smile. He spreads another slice of bread with butter and jam, sets it on a tray beside the cup of coffee he’s poured for Ange. He walks out of the kitchen with the tray, and I hear him whispering, “I did warn you not to go back to that school, didn’t I?”

I eat a thin slice of delicate, aromatic Bayonne ham, another of his offerings. And all that food is good and endlessly consoling, but, coming from him, it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

Then I get ready to set off for work, like any other morning. I walk through the living room again and again, humming, refusing to pay any mind to the feeling, still strong as ever, that the room is full of something that wasn’t there before, something fundamentally unfriendly. That suffocating feeling isn’t entirely unfounded, I know, but I refuse to dwell on it. We’ll deal with that later, I tell myself, not wanting to be late. I can’t help turning one ear to the bedroom, where I hear a whispered conversation.

He doesn’t want me to hear. But what treachery are those two plotting against me?

I take a shower, pull on a sweater and pants, both black (because I’m not as trim as I might be), I do my hair, which I wear short and dyed red, I try to bend my crushed glasses back into shape.

I gently push open the door to our room. Ange is still lying on the bed, wrapped up in his sheet, but Noget has slipped the two pillows under his shoulders, and his head is drooping back, his neck slightly twisted. Sitting on the bed, Noget holds up his head with one hand and with the other puts the bread and jam to Ange’s lips. Ange looks at me. His gaze darkens in terror, discomfort, and uncertainty. I see that, and I immediately put it out of my mind.

“Oh, I’m going to be late for school,” I say. “So you’re eating, my love?”

“All this good food is just the thing for what’s ailing him,” says Noget. “I’ve always made my own bread, even back when I was teaching; I used to get up an hour early just to make my dough, because I loved my work just as you love yours, but even more than that I loved and respected bread, that most sacred of all foods.”

He’s trying to provoke me; he wants to see if I’ll question his past as a teacher again. Oh, who cares, in the end, what he really did and what he only wishes he had.

I ask, “Have you looked at…the wound?”

Oh, I can’t wait to be away from here! This airless, slightly nauseating room (still that faint smell of decay, I tell myself) suddenly oppresses me more than I can bear.

“All in good time,” he says. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to let your husband pretend everything’s fine.”

“Everything is fine,” I haughtily retort.

“I strongly disapprove of your going back to that school,” he scolds.

“Not only is the school my place,” I answer, “but I have to tell the principal that Ange will be away for some time so she can see to finding a substitute, and so no one, especially the children, will be inconvenienced by…”

“Don’t go!” Ange pleads hoarsely.

But I shake my head, dizzy at the idea of staying in the apartment, spending the day going back and forth from the dark, malodorous bedroom to the living room crammed with unknown, malevolent souls.

I throw out a cheery “See you this evening!”

And again I see and willfully ignore the fear and shame darkening Ange’s gaze as Noget brings the cup of coffee to his lips. I hear the porcelain clink against his teeth, as if he were clenching them tight as Noget tries to force him to drink. That was very good coffee he made, I tell myself. Shouldn’t it be me, shouldn’t it be his wife helping Ange eat, helping him drink, helping him, yes, go to the bathroom? Why should he accept that help from the neighbor and not me? For that matter, I ask myself, squirming, is he really accepting it? Because everything I see tells me Ange is enduring that solicitude only because he thinks he has no choice.

He never suspected this man would go to such lengths, would push his advantage so far as to play mommy with him.