Our second night of love was, if possible, even more phenomenal than the first. From the start of our lovemaking, just as we were launching into the preliminaries, I put aside my critical sense, I didn’t think even once about how we must have looked – him, the tall, blond Viking with arms and legs that went on forever and me, the busy little creature who had to make a huge effort to be able to follow the action – and, totally free of inhibition, I took off into the sheer delight of sensations and odours. I read in his eyes and I heard in his voice the pleasure mounting, exploding in incoherent cries, I felt him going soft after each orgasm, then come back to life after some silly laughter and inconsequential caresses. He watched, he followed, he stoked my own pleasure with grunts of encouragement, his body long accustomed to what was new for me, his hands everywhere at once, his mouth burrowing and skillful. We rolled out of bed and continued on the floor what we’d started between the sheets; he smoked a cigarette lying on a carpet that smelled of disinfectant while I curled his pubic hair around my sticky fingers. The smells that filled the room drove me wild with excitement and I imagined myself steeping in it until the end of my days. Like the first time, I wanted it never to stop. But, as my mother would say with an exasperated sigh as she set her empty glass on her bedside table, “All good things must come to an end,” and I saw with apprehension the time when we’d have to go back to our ordinary lives: for him, rehearsals for the show without a name, for me the Sélect, hamburger platters and revolting coffee. And Janine. With, at the end of the tunnel, the hope of getting back to it as often as possible, as long as possible.

Towards the end of our fun and games, though, at the darkest moment of the night, just before the approach of dawn, I sensed a change taking place in him that I couldn’t account for. An absence appeared in his eyes, not suddenly or abruptly but uncoordinated, jerky; his body was less present and his mind, which I’d felt was in unison with mine for several hours, had started to wander strangely outside what was happening between us. At first I thought it was exhaustion, then I told myself that probably the fatigue came from repetition, that we’d taken advantage of and even somewhat abused the night which was ending and that it might be better to keep our interest in one another intact for future sessions by waiting to dull this all-consuming passion when the time came to make love … He gradually stopped laughing, barely hinting at a smile when he pushed aside – but nicely – my attempted caresses, and I was a little worried when I finally fell asleep. Not in his arms either, but curled up in a ball at the edge of the bed.

A few minutes later – it was still dark – he woke me up with a slight push. His voice was strangely altered: it was deeper, nearly broken, he didn’t finish his sentences, a little like the night before, but drained of any excitement, and what remained was the uncontrolled agitation that had so surprised me.

“Sorry, Céline … I didn’t want to wake you up but … sorry to ask you this, Céline, but you have to go now …”

At first I thought I was dreaming, that I was transporting my worry into my sleep, which I was using to get rid of it, but everything was real, his hand that was shaking a little, his body that didn’t smell the same now, his barely recognizable voice. I rubbed my eyes, yawning. He had put his burning hand on my hip.

“Gilbert, have you any idea what time it is … It’s still dark! We just got to sleep …”

He moved away from me; I heard him get out of bed, extricate himself rather, because he dragged himself to the other end before he got up, as if his body were all at once too heavy, though a few minutes earlier he’d got into bed with such agility.

“I know … But … You have to go …”

“Why, what’s going on, what’s so different now?”

“Me, Céline, me. I’m not the same as I was …”

I know it’s idiotic but in the middle of this very serious scene I started thinking about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, one of my father’s favourite movies, and I smiled in the dark. Was Spencer Tracy about to turn into a bloodthirsty monster and murder Ingrid Bergman or Lana Turner, with jerky movements and ridiculous grimaces? But the next thing he said cut short the nervous laughter I could feel rising in my chest, “There are things about me that you mustn’t know about, Céline, that I don’t want you to know about … Not right away … Please, do as I say … Or you may regret it.”

Suddenly, I don’t know why, I thought it all sounded like a pretext, that it was probably hiding something more important than a simple glitch in Gilbert’s personality, another woman maybe, an official girlfriend who was too much in love to be understanding, who was waiting in the wings for me to leave so she could take back what she thought of as her place. Had he dared to be so untruthful to me? I wanted to get to the bottom of it. Right away.

“My God, Gilbert, is another woman going to come and enjoy the bed I warmed up for her without knowing?”

He let out what could have been taken for a snicker but that was just an ugly kind of grunt tinged with irony, “Of course not. If only that was it … it’d be more bearable. What I don’t want you to see, Céline, can’t be fixed; maybe I’ll explain it all to you some day but now … What we’ve just done is too wonderful, I don’t want to ruin it, Céline, so go away now … Please …”

I had no intention of leaving St. Rose Street as an undesirable, a favourite who’d tumbled into disgrace. Even in a taxi. I refused outright to leave his bed at this, to say the least, ungodly hour.

“I’m strong, Gilbert, I can take it. If you have some shameful secret, keep it to yourself; if you’ve got something to tell me, tell me now, but I’m not walking into this strange neighbourhood at five a.m. like a banished mistress who doesn’t know why she’s being kicked out!”

I turned my back to him and went back to sleep despite his protests, which were weaker and weaker.