When I woke up, Gilbert’s place beside me was empty. And cold. I thought he might have gone to rehearse as it was nearly noon. But I heard a sound coming from the kitchen, then I realized I was smelling pot, not toast and coffee. I threw my clothes on, deciding to shower at home. Especially because Gilbert had started smoking so early in the day. Was that what he couldn’t admit? Was he doing more drugs than I thought? As early as breakfast? What he didn’t know was that I’d been living for some time with drag queens who didn’t sneer at a quick toke when they got up … I managed to avoid them when they were excessively hilarious or when what they had to say seemed confused, and that was what I wanted to do with Gilbert if he turned out to be too far gone for my liking. I had no intention of having a muddled, hard-to-follow conversation while I was making my coffee, not even with him. I would tell him I wasn’t angry, I understood, then I’d leave him to his solitary pleasure and his rambling. I was disappointed but I thought it wasn’t as terrible as finding him drunk at dawn as my mother so often was …

In the kitchen, nothing had been moved. Everything was gleaming and clean. So Gilbert hadn’t eaten yet. He was at the table in front of what I thought at first was the classic paraphernalia of the addict that we were used to seeing in American movies – the rubber garotte, the syringe, the small spoon, the matches – but which to my relief turned out to be just a baggie of pot, papers and a rolling machine. As I approached the table, I noticed that Gilbert was more prostrate than sitting and that his head was hanging dangerously over his lighted cigarette – a real one, not a joint. Was he so stoned that he was unconscious? His back was hunched though he usually holds himself so erect, his left leg was trembling and his shoulders shaking from what seemed to be irrepressible sobs.

And when he heard me come in, he showed me a face that was unrecognizable – red and puffy, a Medusa head from which all charm had disappeared and where now there was only suffering and fear. His hair was plastered to his forehead and sweat was pouring down his neck. I was no longer looking at the person with whom I’d shared so much pleasure just a few hours earlier, but at someone so different that I didn’t want to know him. Or even to find out if he existed.

He wiped his tears before he spoke to me.

“I told you not to stay.”

I laid my hand on his damp arm.

“What’s wrong? Are you sick? Is it food poisoning from your bad eating habits? I hope it wasn’t the meat at the Sélect …”

Too pragmatic, as usual. The man before me was obviously shattered and I was carrying on about food poisoning!

He pushed away my hand with surprising brusqueness and his laughter, cynical, frightened me.

“I’m not poisoned – not like that anyway! I told you to go … I didn’t want you to see me like this!”

He picked up the baggie and practically waved it under my nose.

“I even tried to smoke so it wouldn’t show, but it’s made it worse, I’m more down than when I woke up. I’m suffocating, Céline, I wish I could die, right here, right now!”

I put my arms around his head. His odour was different now. Unpleasant. It was no longer the kind of man’s smell that makes you want to kiss him and caress him but a musty smell like sickness, an unhealthy exhalation that turned my stomach. Still I stayed there, with my arms around his neck, his nose against my chest because I knew he needed it.

“I didn’t want you to see me like this! I didn’t want you to know this about me! You’ll go away, you won’t want to see me again! Ever! Just like the others!”

And for the time it took for a heartbeat of mine and a long sob from him, I had a vision. I don’t know if you can talk about a vision when hearing, not sight, is involved, nor do I know if I have the words to express what I felt, or rather heard, so quickly, so fleetingly, but so clearly. Was it because my hope of happiness with Gilbert was collapsing in this obsessively clean kitchen or because my future, once again, was, with no warning, taking a turn that I wasn’t expecting? In the end, wasn’t I hearing my own sense of helplessness? I have no idea, but the fact remains that for a fraction of a second I had the impression that every cry of distress in creation was echoing in my head. All the howls of despair sent out around the world along with Gilbert’s exploded in a single universal note of suffering that struck me like a dagger. A bouquet of intolerable sorrows from the four corners of the world that brought tears to my eyes. Revelation or warning? It only lasted a brief moment but to me it was like an indelible burn, like another sudden stroke of fate that once again and in spite of myself was taking on the task of changing the course of my life. But it may just have been my own implosion that was being revealed in a great and manifold cry. I wanted to run away, to leave Gilbert there in his kitchen, holding the baggie, his left knee shaking, and at the same time to stay there and console him as best I could, hoping to help him out of a depression that I hoped was temporary.

But what about that depression? Did it have a name? It wasn’t new because he’d felt it coming. Where did it come from? How did it manifest itself?

“What’s wrong Gilbert, what’s the matter? Unless you tell me I can’t understand, I can’t help you.”

All at once he straightened up, pushed me away, grabbed his bag of dope, his papers and his rolling machine and left the table, practically knocking it over.

“Enough people in my life have tried to help me, I’m fucked-up enough to know it can’t be done. I’m incurable, Céline, and even what happens between you and me can’t change a thing! This morning proves it. Even with the best intentions in the world you’ll go away. Like the others. I shouldn’t have let it happen. Though I knew. But I was weak …”

He was leaving the kitchen. I ran after him.

“Give it a try at least, Gilbert. Try to explain. Gilbert, you can’t leave me ignorant like this! I’ve got a right to know! After last night I have a right to know! If you don’t think of me as a one night stand, you’re going to tell me!”

He leaned against the door frame. He didn’t turn around to speak to me right away. He started telling me with his back turned. His voice was as unrecognizable as his face, it was broken, nearly toneless. Not until a few minutes later, when he’d made a good start on his story, when he’d assumed his confession, did he come back and sit beside me at the table.

“It’s called la folie circulaire, circular madness …”