12. Did we offend the bad fairy?

Two days later I grudgingly call Gladys.

One of her children answers. When I’m done introducing myself, he lets out a cry and drops the phone. Several minutes of silence go by. I wait, the receiver pressed to my ear, having come to accept that my most ordinary acts will now arouse the most incongruous reactions.

I’m standing at the big living-room window, and I see the rain falling in Rue Esprit-des-Lois, and the dark façades across the way, the balconies no neighbor ever steps out onto anymore, at least not when I’m here. In our building too, people seem to have moved away—because whatever happened to the Foulques, the Dumezes, the Bertauxs, all those fine, quiet couples who just eight months ago packed this very living room, glasses of champagne all around, toasting my granddaughter’s birth?

We’d invited everyone in the building, apart from Noget. Now I never see them around anymore, I don’t hear them, their cars even seem to be gone from the street. Was that a mistake, then, spurning Noget and showering everyone else with various expressions of our cordial feelings, our faintly condescending esteem? Yes, it’s true, Ange and I have always felt vaguely superior to our neighbors and colleagues. As for Noget, the queasy aversion he inspired in us was almost hatred, unquestionably.

“Is that you, Nadia?” says Gladys’s voice at last, slightly distant and veiled, as if she’d taken the precaution of laying a piece of cloth between her mouth and the telephone.

“Yes, it’s me,” I say. “I gave your son quite a scare, didn’t I? The one who answered the phone?”

Gladys ignores my chirpy tone. She doesn’t make a sound. A shiver runs down the back of my neck. I quickly turn toward the living room doorway, but I see no sign of anyone. Which of course doesn’t mean I’m alone.

“You and Priscilla haven’t come to see your papa,” I say.

“No,” says Gladys after a long pause.

Her voice is even fainter than before. I force myself to go on:

“He’s not well at all.”

“I didn’t think so,” says Gladys.

Her answer comes after a few seconds of silence, as if it took that long for my voice to reach her, or as if she had to weigh every word, every intonation, before she could even think of speaking to me. But, I ask myself, what cruel misuse could I possibly make of Gladys’s words?

“You promised you’d be back,” I say, slightly lost. “It’s just a little strange…”

“We’re learning to separate from him,” says Gladys.

Her voice has become almost inaudible. Suddenly frantic, sensing that this conversation will be our last, that Gladys will never again answer my calls, I shout into the receiver, “Hey, Gladys!”

“Well,” says Gladys, “I think I’ll be hanging up now.”

“Wait! I have to tell you, both of you, that…I’m going away.”

Stinging tears fill my eyes. All the same, I stand firmly on my two feet, looking out at the lashing rain, to deprive the being clearly hidden in my living room of the pleasure of seeing me collapse.

“Yes?” says Gladys, further away all the time. “You’re going away, you say?”

“To my son’s. But, oh, Gladys, I’ll have to leave Ange behind, he’s in no shape to travel.”

I speak very quickly to keep Gladys with me a little longer, that woman I’ve so often wished I could never see again, exasperated by her hostility, pragmatism, and ostentatious saintliness when she came for a visit, for instance.

“Ange will stay here, in the care of our neighbor,” I say, feeling an unbearable shame, “but you two must come and see him, keep an eye on him, or…oh God… Please, Gladys…”

“I’m going to hang up now. I do have children, you know. Oh, Papa never should have had anything to do with you… I’m hanging up…”

“You will come, won’t you, Gladys?”

I press the receiver to my ear so hard it burns.

I then see one corner of a curtain being lifted up in an apartment across the street. The Chinese student who lives there—yet another I haven’t seen on the sidewalk for months, for so long that I thought she’d gone away too—is standing with her forehead against the glass. Our eyes meet. She gives me a quick smile. I find that comforting beyond all reason. I remember she used to walk around stark naked behind her sheer curtains, and when Ange saw her he looked away in anger and said, “That little whore, who does she think she is? I’m going to call the cops on her if she keeps that up.”

Ange took a certain pleasure in saying those words, but, I ask myself, who could ever have heard them but me? Only lately have I sensed a spiteful presence lurking in our living room. Before, it was just the two of us, Ange and me, and no one would ever suspect me of repeating anything Ange said, because I’m a discreet and even taciturn woman, when I’m with adults.

I then hear Gladys’s voice fading away, dying out, as if blown off on a wind too strong to resist.

“I’m learning to forget my father, and so is Priscilla,” says Gladys. “We don’t have a choice, you know. There’s no choice… It’s better for him this way too.”

“Why is it better for him?” I shriek.

Just as I feared, it’s too late: nothing more comes from the receiver but the slow beep of the signal telling me to hang up.

I go to the window and peer out at the rain, hoping I might see the Chinese student again. My entire being is still basking in the consolation of her smile, short-lived though it was, almost imperceptible. Wasn’t Ange, wasn’t my beloved Ange going too far, hating that girl just because she liked to show off her pretty unclothed body? Once he pretended to slap her, broadly miming that slap in front of the window, a savage look on his face, to make it clear to her once and for all that he found her nudity so offensive that he couldn’t control his rage. And did that have any effect on her? She looked at him in surprise, then lowered her eyes to her breasts, her legs, as if she herself were just realizing she had nothing on, or as if she were trying to find anything in her appearance that might so upset Ange that he might want to destroy her from afar, and then she gave an innocent laugh, with an elegant shake of her head.

I also remember the evening we had our friends in to toast the birth of Souhar (why on earth did you call her that? I asked my son on the phone, troubled and unhappy), when Ange pointed the student’s window out to everyone, braying, “You know how that girl behaves?”

Whereupon he described and then imitated her way of parading around, and he managed to create such an impression of obscenity simply by walking with little mincing steps, his belly thrust out, his bottom held high, that it made the Dumezes and the Foulques deeply uncomfortable, I sensed, because they’re such good people, so innocent in a way. I wanted to tell Ange, “No, no, that’s not what she looks like at all,” but I only smiled in amusement, afraid Ange might order me to imitate the girl myself if I criticized him. And I’m not chaste enough to properly reproduce her natural, carefree display, I told myself, and my impersonation would be nearly as untrue and indecent as Ange’s. We don’t have anything like that girl’s wonderful weightlessness, I thought, no more than her slightly simple, slightly unpolished good-heartedness, and that’s why we can only be a hideous sight when we try to mock her.

Finally night falls, swallowing up the dark day, the ceaseless rain. All at once I feel a cold breath on the back of my neck, and I hold my own breath, as I always do when he comes too close.

“I’ve made dinner,” he purrs, his dry, icy lips grazing my neck. “Paupiettes with mushrooms and cream, and a little artichoke risotto you’re going to love. I have the crème fraîche delivered from a dairy in Normandy that guarantees all the wholesomeness and flavor I demand, just as you and your husband do, isn’t that so? You love good things as much as I do, don’t you? Come and eat, I have a plate all ready for you. Meanwhile, I’ll go feed our poor Ange.”

“I’ll deal with that,” I say quickly.

Only then does it occur to me that the time for such precautions might have passed, since I’ve resigned myself to leaving Ange behind, handing him over to Noget.

Standing in the kitchen, I eat the food he’s made for us, hurried and vaguely disgusted, then tiptoe to our bedroom. Through the half-open door I see Noget’s back as he bends over Ange, and it comes to me that I bend over my students in exactly the same way when I’m scolding them, trying to intimidate them with the full weight of my furious, looming flesh. Ange is holding the fork himself, spearing pieces of meat on the plate Noget is offering him, and eating very quickly.

He’s not letting him take his time, I tell myself.

His cheeks are puffed out, still full of food, and already he’s stuffing in another piece, then a huge forkful of rice. Noget hurries him along.

“Come on, come on,” he grumbles, “I’ve got things to do.”

But after all, who am I to find fault? Aren’t I relieved that Noget has taken my place in the stinking bedroom?

I’ve taken to sleeping in the room we use as a study. The smell of Ange’s wound makes me woozy. I can’t stand to be by his side for more than a few minutes, vainly mopping up the pus, running a washcloth dipped in eau de cologne over his forehead and cheeks, which turn yellower and more hollow with each passing day. Ange now looks at Noget and me with the same gaze, at once evasive and pleading, frightened and slightly lethargic. But when, just in case, I venture to murmur, “Do you want me to send for Doctor Charre?” his wasted face flushes, and he furiously shakes his head.

“I’ve told you a hundred times, I don’t want to see anyone,” he grumbles. “Don’t you understand? He’d give me a shot…a lethal injection… I’m sure he’s got a syringe all ready…with my name on it. He’s just waiting for his cue… waiting for you to call.”

“But why should that be, Ange?” I ask patiently.

And he laughs meanly, trying to mimic me, but he doesn’t have the strength and soon has to give up, making do with an almost loathing glance that fills me with horror. What has my husband turned into? The man I loved, the man who was one with me, where has he gone?