Of course, looking back I can see that the trouble started on Tuesday at around . . . one o’clock, I’d say.
I could ask myself, innocent flower that I am, why I spent so much time making myself pretty, creaming and gelling and spraying and powdering. Why I put on a dress, and then changed into trousers, and then back into a dress again, and why I made sure to have smooth skin and bare arms and red lips that day.
Yes, Mathilde, why?
Tyranny. The tyranny of the embittered. I was pretty because I was cheerful, and I was cheerful because I was happy. It didn’t actually matter that much that my guardian angel was a man (as far as I knew) (a guy, Pauline had repeated; “a guy found your bag in the bar where you’d been”); you could have told me an old lady had found it, or the runtiest little weakling, and I’d have gotten ready with the same care. It wasn’t him I was honoring by going into the city in a short little skirt; it was life. Life and its rare goodness, and the spring, and reunions. I was pretty because I was grateful.
Mathilde . . .
Okay—fine, yes, I was also pretty because it was a date. Made over the telephone, yes, and self-serving, yes, but serendipitous.
It was a date that had fallen out of the sky, with a human being who was immediately desirable—a date in Paris, near the huge fairy-tale hall built by Emperor Napoleon I, at teatime, for reasons of integrity.
I was pretty because it was a hell of a lot more exciting than some online date; I mean, shit!
There, now you know everything, Doctor.
I stopped to buy flowers near the Parc Monceau. I put them in my bike basket and made up for the delay by pedaling faster.
A bunch of pink peonies for the stranger who had put me back on track.