1933, after summer
Lucien’s father remarried because of Bach’s The Art of Fugue, Counterpoint III, which he played at the cathedral of Saint-Vincent-des-Prés. After the service, a woman wanted to meet the man who had played it so wonderfully. She went up the stairs leading to the organ. An hour later, she asked Étienne to marry her. He said yes. He followed her and moved to Lille.
Étienne left the house, furniture, linen, crockery, and Braille books to Lucien, who didn’t want to leave the area. He asked his son why he wanted the Braille books, and he replied: “To keep your fingerprints.” Lucien watched his father getting into the fine car of his new wife. He looked happy. Lucien kissed him and, for the last time, told him what he was seeing and Étienne would never see:
“You look happy.”
Since his father’s departure, Lucien has been working at a café, the one belonging to old Louis. It’s Milly’s sole café. He helps with serving, and loading and unloading the crates of bottles and beer barrels; he returns drunk men to their wives every evening, and is in charge of washing the floors, windows, and glasses. He’s also meant to help old Louis behind the bar on busy days, which is to say, never.
Since measurement day, Lucien takes the train once a week, on Saturday, to be with Hélène in Clermain. Sometimes, he cycles there. Always dressed in his navy-blue flannel suit. He goes straight to the church, never stopping on the way, looks at the statue Hélène was praying at that first time, and then hides in the confessional. At around 6 P.M., Hélène joins him. They then wait in silence to be locked inside the church.
Lucien slips his week’s tips into the collection box and lights up Hélène’s body by burning candles. He guides Hélène’s fingers towards reading, and his own towards loving. Hélène likes stories set beside the sea best, even though she’s never seen it.
Since they first met, Hélène has changed a lot. Reading has unlocked her. As if daylight were finally penetrating her and then seeping out through every pore of her skin. She moves like a woman who is, at last, wearing floaty dresses after a very, very long winter.
When they start to feel sleepy, she speaks to him of her childhood, and it’s like a lullaby. She tells him about the girls’ school. About those feverish days, about the words that refused to be seen by her, about her mouth that went crazy and spat out any old thing, about the despair of isolation. She tells him about the only thing she could do before him: make dresses and suits.
She tells him about the evening she licked the words on the blackboard, thinking they were poisonous. And the little seagull that threw itself against the window to save her life. She assures him that every human being is linked to a bird. And that certain people share the same one. You just have to look up at the sky to see that your bird is never far away. She says that birds don’t die, they’re eternally devoted. That as soon as you put a bird in a cage, a man goes mad.
In return, Lucien says he loves her. He has never heard anything as beautiful as Hélène’s voice.
“Talk some more . . .”
While she’s talking, he breathes her in. This girl smells like a bouquet of roses and hawthorn blossom. A fragrance at once domestic and wild. When she’s silent, he lights fresh candles to see her taking pleasure from him.
On Sunday morning, they leave early because Mass starts at 8 A.M. If he takes the train, Hélène accompanies him to the station. If he sets off on his bike, Hélène watches him disappearing over the horizon.
Once she’s alone again, she returns home without going to the atelier—she doesn’t work there much anymore. Since knowing Lucien, she lies to her parents. Like when she was a dunce. She pretends to have terrible headaches in order to shut herself away in her room and spend hours reading with her fingertips.
She’s not in love with Lucien. She’s grateful to him. He got her out of jail when she had a life sentence. Thanks to him, she can feel the wind in her hair, the sun pricking her skin, smiles chapping her lips. He’s her best friend, the brother she never had, her salvation. Thanks to him, she’s lucky. He brings her luck every Saturday.
Lucien’s beauty, know-how, and gentleness make her climax automatically, not amorously. It’s not love as she’d imagined it, the love that leaves you reeling. Lucien isn’t a prince charming but an entire kingdom. He could ask her for anything he wants; she’d give it to him.
He’s madly in love with her. He thinks only of her. He’d like to breathe her in all night and all day. Her thighs, her sex, her arms, her skin, her mouth, her eyes, her back, her ass, her hands, her fingers, her voice. She has replaced everything. Even his fear of losing his sight. He doesn’t read anymore, listen to music anymore, swim anymore. He barely eats, and his flannel suit is becoming baggy on him.
At the café, he rewashes the clean tiles and glasses several times a day to keep his hands busy, to avoid going crazy. He thinks only of Saturday. That when she enters the church he’ll recognize her step, that she’ll dip her hand into the holy water, greet her Lord with a sign of the cross, pull open the confessional door, smile at him, lift her skirt and expect just one thing from him: the new Braille book he’ll have brought along.
At the brothel, he paid the girls with cash; this girl he pays with books. He knows she doesn’t love him and gives herself to him the way the Autun prostitutes give themselves. Love is the art of being selfish.
On the last Saturday of 1933, a December 30th, Lucien Perrin makes his non-proposal of marriage to Hélène Hel.