So, so . . . why am I unhappy? Let’s see, then . . . ”
And as you still couldn’t go on with the next part of the story, I put some water on to boil, and placed a cup of herbal tea at your feet, by Oum-Popotte’s paws.
“Thanks.”
And as you seemed to have so many reasons to be unhappy that you didn’t even know where to begin, I pulled on another strand of yarn for you.
“You text a lot in the morning, don’t you?”
“That’s it,” you said with a smile, “yes, you got it.”
“Are you in love?”
“Yes. No. Yes. Why are you smiling?”
“Because that’s a good start!”
“Say, do you have any cigarettes?”
“I do. I don’t smoke, but I have some. They were here when I moved in, they might not be any good.”
“No problem. I’ll have one.”
I handed you the old packet of Marlboros which had been drying out under my stuffed piranha.
“Great. Thanks.”
“Hey, do you mind if I pour the last of the whisky into my tea?”
“Go right ahead. Make yourself at home.”
“Thanks.”
You gave a sigh of wonder and relief as you let out a long puff of stale nicotine, while I swapped one hot drink for another; where there’s a will, there’s a way.
So then I started laughing. And I knew you were becoming my friend. Because smiling was one thing, but laughing . . . Laughing was so unexpected, as activities went, at this time of my life. So unexpected.
“I’ll tell you. I’m unhappy because I’m weak, and I’m weak because I’m . . . I don’t know . . . other than ‘dumb’ I don’t know what to call it . . . This contempt I feel for my youth, those years of garrison and barracks and fucking standing around waiting, yes, all those hollow years, it’s not just that I can’t move beyond them, I’ve gone and put myself back in there. Listen, it’s worse than that: I’m now living in the hollowness of those hollow years. Such a shitty, stupid thing, downright degrading. Yes, that’s it, degrading. I’ve just realized what it means, dishonorable. Damn, what a horrible thing to realize. I’ve lost everything and I don’t even have my honor anymore. But how did I manage to do such a thing, I wonder . . . ”
Silence.
“Can you tell me?”
Silence.
“Because I don’t know. I’m a bad soldier.”
“Is he married?”
“Ah, you see,” you winced, “on top of being dishonorable, it’s banal. It’s banal, conventional, vulgar. The whole nine yards. Total debacle. I’ll tell you one thing, Saint Georgie and Saint Mickey must not be very proud of their little recruit. That’s all there is to it: he’s married. What more can I say? Nothing. Don’t you have a deck of cards or some board game so we can finish this lovely little evening in a nice quiet way? Monopoly, or Pay Day?”
“I’ve got Uno.”
“Oh, no, that’s way too hard. I’ll never manage.”
Smiles.
“You know,” I went on, “I think you’re beautiful. No, wait, I don’t think you’re beautiful, you are beautiful. To me you don’t look at all like a woman who’s lost her honor. When I see you chatting with him in the morning, I see a woman who is loved, that much is completely obvious.”
“Thank you. That’s sweet. Sweet, and true. Or at least I think it’s true. And that’s the worst thing about it. I may have lost my honor, but I’ve still got love. Well . . . love . . . A little bit of love. What’s left of it, anyway. Skewed, utterly vague, stolen text messages. It used to be I couldn’t wait for the weekend and now it’s the other way around. Now I dread it. Hate it, even. It’s a sort of extinction, a little death. I die, and then I’m reborn, every five days. It’s exhausting. It’s exhausting and above all utterly pointless. I told you, what I’m going through is as negative as it gets. In the old days I used to start breathing again on Friday afternoon, and now by Thursday evening I start to fade. And over the weekend I sleep as much as possible so it will go by faster. It’s cruel, isn’t it? It is. Cruel. Mean. I hear God sniggering and saying, You weren’t kind to the nuns? You didn’t hold the rosary for the dying? You didn’t finish your soy lecithin chocolates? Well here. Take this. Expiate. Go ahead and cry. Spend the Lord’s day in tears and the rest of your life in the visiting room, my girl. Let that be a lesson to you.
“I don’t live with a man, I live with my phone. My entire life revolves around this little slab of plastic. A sort of capricious, sadistic Aladdin’s lamp that governs my mood depending on whether I rub it and it fulfills my wishes or I respect it and it abandons me. An Aladdin’s lamp made in China and containing a good genie, no, a bad one, a good-for-nothing genie, a sort of bureaucrat who’s only there during business hours and for whom you don’t even exist under your true identity. When I say ‘I love you’ it’s not me saying it, it’s some fraudulent identity I’m going around under these days . . . it changes so often . . . and I can’t even write ‘I love you’ because everything is coded, as if I were his secretary doing his filing. I love you is ‘Confirmed,’ ‘I’m thinking about you’ is ‘Pending,’ and ‘I want you’ is ‘Urgent.’ Pretty pathetic, huh?
“Pathetic. It’s not a love affair I’m having, I spend my life filing. What was the point of all those years I spent studying, anyway . . . ”
“What did you study?”
“Urban planning. I have a degree from the École nationale supérieure in Paris, with honors, and why did I go through all that? To set my heart on a man with whom I’ll never be able to build anything. Hey, you have to admit I’m really pretty stupid, when it comes down to it . . . ”
“Why are you so categorical? Maybe he will . . . I don’t know . . . change his life.”
“No. Do you know of any men who leave their wives for their mistresses? When they have small children? And a loan? And an Audi? And a dog? And a dwarf bunny? And guilt? And a family home in La Trinité? No, of course you don’t. I may not be clever, but I’m lucid. And besides, he’s never promised me a thing. In that respect I cannot fault him. And anyway I don’t fault him, for anything, when I found him he was married, and I went ahead, knowing full well what I was getting into. He has never promised me anything but never hidden anything, either. He’s been honest, and that’s it. But would he ever take his custom elsewhere, no, I don’t believe he would. Or I no longer believe. Women are the ones who will take that kind of risk, men, never. Why? I don’t know. Maybe women have more imagination . . . Or maybe they are more willing to gamble . . . Or they’re on better terms with life. It’s surely wrong of me to make these sweeping statements but when I look around me, that’s what I see. That we are not at all equal in our dealings with life. With death, even. Women are not as afraid of death. Is that because they give life—is that the reason? I don’t know. It all sounds like such a cliché but I can’t think of any other explanation. Whatever they do, whatever they decide, whatever they destroy and toss to the ground, I get the impression that life is still on the side of women. Like some sort of huge house pet that always stays with the hand that feeds it even if it’s the most brutal, uncaring hand. You know, it’s like those old soldiers in the days of empire, like Napoleon’s old guard, following him into the depths of winter and of his madness without ever questioning a single order for even one second. The Memoirs of Sergeant Bourgogne, have you ever read that? My godfather gave it to me when I was fifteen. It’s terrific . . . Yes, men have it rough, but that’s the way it is. And my lover is no more—I was going to say, ‘courageous,’ but that’s not it, he is courageous, in his way—he’s just no more robust than anyone else because he doesn’t want . . . doesn’t want to go against life, rub it the wrong way, displease it, be deprived of it and die one night all alone, with his mouth open. And the thing that is really twisted about all this is that if I stay with him, the age I am now, I may never have any children. That would be a shame, after all, wouldn’t it? Even if I often deny it, I would like to have children. Yes, I would. Sometimes I stop thinking about it, but when I saw your kids at the café last month, it really hit me. Besides, I don’t know if you noticed, but on the days that followed I didn’t go to the café. I didn’t want to see you again, you or the kids, I was too envious. Yes, that’s it: envious. And envy is a luxury I can ill afford if I want to go on getting up in the morning. You see, I’m unhappy because everything I’m going through right now reminds me of my childhood, of how helpless I was and . . . ”
You fell silent, looked up, and asked me, staring me straight in the eye:
“Can I go on?”
“You can go on.”
“I feel like I’m taking advantage. Using you. Lying here on your sofa and dumping my cartload of shit on your head.”
“You think you’re on a sofa?”
She didn’t answer.
“Come on, Mathilde . . . you can see for yourself it’s not a sofa. It’s Oum-Popotte’s belly.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Oum-Popotte, the invisible dog’s friend. The children will introduce you to him someday, you’ll see . . . ”
Smiles.
“And besides, you’re not dumping anything, you’re telling a story. You’re setting yourself free. Unburdening yourself. That’s much nicer.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. It does me good, you know. It’s the first time in months that I’ve spent the evening with someone besides myself and you have no idea how much I needed this. Go on. Tell me more, like the kids say, tell me more.”
“I don’t know what else to say.”
“How long have you known each other?”
“Nearly four years.”
“And you have no hope that the situation will, uh, evolve?”
“Do you want to help me to bump off his wife?”
“No,” I said with a smile, “no. Before, I had no opinion, but now I’m against death. I have discovered that it, too, is disappointing and pointless. Really pointless. But . . . ”
“But what?”
“Well, let’s stop talking about him and get back to you. I don’t care about him. I don’t like him. I don’t respect him. I don’t want you to talk about him. He doesn’t interest me. It’s not your situation that is vulgar, it’s him. I don’t like liars. I don’t like men who make women unhappy. I don’t like men who cheat on their wives. Careful, I’m not talking about sex, here. Sex is another compartment. I’m for physical exultation and against frustration but that’s something else. This is about four years, and four years means an affair. And the very word, ‘affair,’ is horrible. It’s like ‘mistress,’ it’s ugly. You said just now that life was more loyal to women. Life, maybe, but society, no. Society already has a connotation for everything, the bitch. And has done for centuries. On the one hand, you have Marguerite Duras’s lover, this handsome Chinese man who fucks like a god, and on the other hand you have Barbey d’Aurevilly’s old mistress, where she’s an older woman who is always breaking his balls. Hey. Great. Thanks, Andrew Marvell, thanks. Stuff you and your world enough and time. A lover is a fine thing and it remains a charming word. Lover man oh where can you be, all those Billie Holiday songs. A lover is always sexy, but a mistress . . . A mistress, just the word, it reeks already of trouble and mothballs. It’s so unfair. No, the problem isn’t him, it’s you. Why do you put up with it? Why do you go along with it? And why all that ‘preamble,’ that’s the word you used, just to start talking about him? It’s disturbing. Why did you feel you had to tell me all about your years at boarding school just so you could get to your . . . to his kid’s dwarf bunny?”
“To establish a parallel.”
“You think so? But you are just as responsible as he is for the situation, and surely even more so, because I expect you’ve tried to leave him already, haven’t you?”
“Two hundred times.”
“So you went back, two hundred times, too.”
“Yes.”
“So you see, you’re the one who’s calling the shots, after all. This is no parallel, it’s a circle. You said so yourself, that you ‘put yourself back in there,’ and this is where your story gets interesting. Forget the Audi and Ye Olde Hovel by the seaside, who gives a damn. You are worth so much more than that. You are absolutely lovely, and funny, and tender, you’re sensitive and intelligent, you know the difference between Wigglytuff and Jigglypuff, you’ve almost quit smoking, you are one of the most attractive women I’ve ever met and you know damn well you would have no trouble at all seducing anyone who catches your eye, so why this . . . this life ‘standing around waiting,’ to quote you once again? It must be that deep down it suits you, it really does, isn’t that it? There are loads of plus sides to standing around waiting. You don’t have to think, you don’t have to take any initiative, you obey, you can be passive . . . You’re in such a repetitive, repressive situation that there’s no room for doubt or anxiety, and I mean anxiety with a capital A, existential anxiety, and obviously that is very convenient, but it leaves no room for adventure, for meeting people, for chaos and confusion, for fate, in other words . . . For the whims and twists of fate. That’s a really practical setup you’ve got. Real cozy. You’re like a duty officer in his little shack, you don’t have to question a thing, you don’t ask yourself any questions, and often, basically, this duty officer doesn’t even give a damn about what it is he’s guarding. He could give a flying fuck. He’s just there freezing his balls off until the next bozo takes over. And so, why not? But then don’t go telling me that women are on better terms with life, because honestly, Mathilde, you . . . you have let me down, there . . . ”
“Are you a shrink or something?”
Your voice suddenly became more aggressive.
“No, not at all. I’m just trying to understand. If you hadn’t started by telling me about your childhood, I might be giving you a different speech, but because you did, I find it troubling, don’t you? It’s not the fact that you spent years in . . . on your military base that decides who you are or who could make you who you are, it’s the fact that you needed to tell me about them in such detail. Listening to you I get the impression that you have deliberately chosen to live your life as a sort of perpetual Wednesday afternoon, and I would like to know why. I’m not judging you, I hope that’s clear? I’m just trying to understand.”
“You mean I’m suffering from Stockholm syndrome or some putrid thing like that?”
“I don’t know, it’s not like your years in boarding school can be compared to being taken hostage, but you have to admit it’s a tempting explanation. You tell me that for eight years you had no life, and now that you’re grown up, emancipated, and free, you go and add four more years to the bag. Hey, admit you like counting the days, don’t you? What other explanation could there be?”
You sat there, silent.
“I’ve offended you,” I said. “Forgive me. I can see it on your face, what I’ve said is offensive. Forgive me. I have no right—”
“No, no. You haven’t offended me at all. On the contrary, it’s as if you’re disinfecting me. I’m not being reticent, it’s just that it stings. What you’re doing is painful. It’s surely doing me good, but it is painful.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to play Uno?”
Smiles.
“No. I want to go on. I want you to go on examining this wound with me. Do you mind?”
“I’m listening.”
“No, I’m listening to you.”
“But I have nothing to tell you, you know . . . ”
“You do. Of course you do. You have to tell me to leave him, once and for all.”
“But I don’t need to tell you that, you know it already! You’ve said as much yourself. By coming here, for a start. It’s not a story, your confession, it’s a geological survey map. That smartphone you peck at like a wretch; the way you deny reality; the way you can only speak of tenderness if you smuggle it in, all those stories about files to organize, or rotten foundations, or building permits you’ll never get, those were all your words. That’s your vision of things. Your own conclusions. You’ve never once talked about how good this man makes you feel, have you?”
Silence. Stinging.
“He does do you good,” I continued, more gently, “I know he does. I just told you how pretty you looked, those mornings when you had the time to talk to him, but that sort of thing won’t do, Mathilde, it just won’t do. It’s too brief. Too restricted. Too stingy. We all know that real happiness doesn’t exist, and we have to do what we can to get by without it, but in this instance . . . This thing of yours is a real trap. To love a man for four years and at the end of all these years you still have to write ‘confirmed’ instead of ‘I love you,’ that is . . . Yes. You’re right. It’s the end of honor.”
Silence.
I poured the last drop of whiskey into your cold cup.
“Thank you,” you murmured, your head down.
“You can’t go on playing this game, can you?”
“I can’t leave him. Every time I try, I go to pieces. Maybe life is stingy with him but without him it’s even worse.”
“Life? What life? Four years leading this clandestine life. Four years in hiding. Like some resistance fighter in the Maquis. Four years of sorrow over a man who can only hold you in his arms at the price of a lie, and who thinks it’s enough to toss you a handful of text messages now and again. But, hey, remember: you’re not a whore, Mathilde, you’re not a whore. I know you’re in pain. I know that. But the twisted thing is that all you have to show for four years in the shadow of a married man is an accumulation of false joy, false starts, false intimacy, pretend reunions, disappointment, humiliation, and bitterness, and at the end of it all, you’ve lost yourself along the way. You can’t even remember that you are worth a thousand times more than anything this man can give you. Take that back: not give you.”
“No. Don’t say that. It’s not true. He’s better than that. You don’t know him but he’s better than what you say he is. Otherwise I wouldn’t have come this far.”
“Does he know you want a child?”
“He suspects as much.”
“And he won’t give you one?”
“No.”
“If he really loved you, he would leave you. When you love a woman who wants a child, you give her one or else you let her go.”
“You give her one. What a macho thing to say. You sound like some shitty little adjutant.”
“I’m talking like a mom. But it is macho, I’ll give you that. Okay, You want to have children with her or else you let her go.”
“And now you sound like a priest.”
“I sound like the widow of a man who was twenty years older than me, and who didn’t want children, who thought he was too old to be a father, so he left me, then came back one year later, and stood there waiting for me when I got off work, pushing a beautiful baby carriage in front of him. A Bonnichon baby carriage, no less. But for a whole year, not a single sign of life. Ever. No text messages, no flowers, no notes, nothing. For a whole year I was free.”
Silence.
“I’m afraid to leave him. I’m afraid of solitude. I’m afraid I’ll regret it, and miss him. I’m afraid I’ll never live so fully again. I’m afraid of being bored and never getting over it. Even if I stop myself from thinking like this, I’m sure there’s some mean little bug deep inside me, some sort of termite, that still believes he’ll eventually leave his wife, even though they’ve just bought an apartment together. In fact, I’m hanging on for all the wrong reasons. I’m hanging on because I’m listening to that mean little bug. I’m listening to my worst side. The one that lies and fabricates, the one that is cowardly and scared.”
“Following orders that bring dishonor—that’s what’s so tragic about the military, isn’t it? Why are you still forcing yourself into this sort of dilemma? Why? You have to act like that great Élisabeth you spoke of earlier, Mathilde: leave behind these outdated values. Desert. Unharness your horse. Take off your uniform and lay down your arms. Get the hell out. Go over the wall. You deserve a better life. You know, I would never speak to you in this tone if I hadn’t seen you with my kids. If I hadn’t seen you sniffing their security blankets or running your hand through Alice’s curls a while ago. Why risk depriving yourself of all of that, tell me? Why? For who? For what? And if you were to have a child behind his back, that would be as appalling as infidelity, so you have to make the break if you want a sweeter life some day. You have no choice. You really have to get out of there. And as I’m telling you all this I realize just how limited my words are, because . . . Because I had found him, the eternal lover, the dream daddy for my kids; I had found him. And now look . . . at the end of the day, here I am bringing them up all alone, so . . . So I should keep my mouth shut.”
Laughter. Shouts. Noise.
Voices raised, and the sound of broken glass on the pavement.
“Listen,” I continued, sitting up straight, “I’ll tell you my truth. I’ll tell you my truth that isn’t your truth and which isn’t reality, either. My truth is that I may be able to lecture for hours on end but I’m wrong. I’m wrong because if I’m honest, here’s another truth: what the hell do I know. I’ve never known much, and since my love left me, I’ve been a complete wreck, so really, you can just take it or leave it, all this stuff I said. You know, above all, leave it. Yes, leave it, I’m in no position to go explaining life to others just now. Not only am I a complete wreck, I’m also in an even more dubious state than a wreck. I’m fallible across the board, believe me. As I sit here talking to you there is nothing solid about me, nothing. But what I can add, uh, to keep playing my part as anesthesiologist, so to speak, is that when I met him, I was the one who was married, well, not officially, but as good as. Yes. I was the one causing the pain. He was so clever that he never had to put any pressure on me, naturally. Not the slightest pressure, no, and he would never have dared talk down to me the way I just have to you. This lecture I just gave you—he would have been horrified to hear me talking like that. Horrified and disappointed. He thought I was more subtle than that. What he did, to get me to leave my little shack that was as dreary as it was comfortable, what he did is he let me go on and on about my life with my ex—my domestic partner—how he loved to whisper the phrase, dragging out the second syllable to the tip of my dimples, he would let me go on and on, like you have this evening, listening to me very attentively, as I have this evening, and then at the end he . . . ”
Silence. I was smiling.
“He what?”
“He yawned. He yawned and it made me laugh.”
“And then?”
“And then nothing. And then I left a man I was bored with for a man who made me laugh.”
“Whoa . . . ” you groaned, curling up in the folds of our confessional, “I would have loved to have known him . . . Tell me about him. Tell me some more about him.”
“No. Some other day. Some other night. We have to get to sleep now. School day tomorrow.”
“No, tell me. Tell me something. Please. Tell me another nice thing to add some grist to your mill and give me strength.”
“Another time, I promise.”
Silence.
“Do you mind if I sleep here for a few hours?”
“No, of course not. Wait, I’ll find you a blanket.”
I got back up, threw out the last empty bottle, put our cups and bowls in the sink, went to get a comforter from the bed and came back, closed the shutters, pulled the curtains, turned up the heat, and tucked you in.
I switched off the light then added:
“If I had known I loved him that much, I would have loved him even more.”
Did that thing, that grist, those last words murmured in the dark, give you courage?
I don’t know. In the morning, you had already struck camp and I never saw you again.