I know exactly why I’m here before you, my dear coworkers. I have no intention of shirking my responsibilities, I acknowledge and accept whatever sanctions you decide to impose on me. But it is essential, before you judge me, that you fully understand the tenets and outcomes of the affair that brings us here today. Of course you’ve all read Claire Millecam’s file, some of you met her long before I did, and my position as a “newcomer” in the establishment as well as my general lack of experience are probably not unrelated to the mistakes I make. Nevertheless, there’s a text I’d like to read to you, a text several pages long, one I’m sure none of you has seen, and one that sheds a different light—at least I believe it does—on the decision that I took in all good faith, independently of the consequences. It is an extract of the novel that Claire wrote here, in the writing workshop, over the course of several weeks—to be more accurate, it consists of large extracts copied from the second part of this novel, in which she imagines what her life with Chris could have been like if, without admitting to her initial imposture, she’d had the courage to try embarking on a love affair with him, a love affair she felt was possible and that she dreamed of having. When I read it, I remembered Lacan’s words: “Relationships start in the imagination.” She entrusted it to me after our first conversations, so I’m not betraying her—not entirely—by reading it to you, and this reading strikes me as vital if you are to get inside Claire’s head and if you are to try, by understanding her, to understand me too.
Claire Millecam
FALSE CONFIDENCES
a novel
The story I want to tell is of a love affair that is always possible even when it appears impossible to those far removed from the writing of it—since writing is not concerned with the possibility or otherwise of the affair.
—Marguerite Duras, Blue Eyes, Black Hair
At this stage I couldn’t get Chris out of my head, I thought about him all the time. It was unbearable to think nothing would ever happen between us; breaking it off would be like turning my back on life. After all, I was crazy about this man, he loved me, he’d said he did, so why give up? Our destinies were bound together, he kept saying so, he was sure of it. Why not put that to the test? It was like being in a film: it would have been unthinkable to take out the pivotal scenes. He’d messaged me saying he’d soon be returning from Lacanau, living with Joe was getting difficult. (I privately sympathized. How could it not be difficult?)
“Really?” I wrote, “What happened?” In fact, Joe was refusing to let Chris work on the Goa reportage, he’d even destroyed some of the videos and photos taken there; and his family was coming for the summer vacation. Chris had already bought his ticket, he was coming back on a Monday, in three weeks’ time, he hoped to meet me at last. The time had come to try my luck. And so I decided to meet him for real, as me, Claire Millecam: we’d soon see what happened to love. To do this, I had to eliminate Claire Antunes, or at least make her disappear from Chris’s sight lines if not from his memory. I thought about the best way to free up the space taken by this virtual rival for whom I experienced surges of inexpressible, visceral jealousy, a feeling of powerlessness in the face of her youth and beauty. There’s no worse rival than one who doesn’t exist. Confronted with her, I felt as the sister of a dead child must feel about her parents: quite sure that in their hearts she will never triumph over this ideal. My niece Katia, who was languishing in a psychiatric hospital after her suicide attempt, was the focus of only part of my aggression. Granted, Chris was in love with an image of her; but that was my fault. And I knew she was so messed up by her last failed relationship that I couldn’t project my unforgivable resentment on her.
The best way to get rid of Claire Antunes was still…for her to get rid of herself. So I decided to have her go abroad, and as I’d astutely given her a Portuguese name, she could go set up home…in Lisbon. It wasn’t really an impulsive move, she explained to Chris in a firm but affectionate message; it was just that her parents lived there and they’d found her an interesting job, better paid than the slavery of her temporary contract, and as things weren’t going very well with Gilles, she was leaving to take stock of things—“I might be back in a few months,” she said, then added a final “And even if we never meet, I’ll always love you.” I wasn’t making her close the door for good, sensing that I might well want or need to open it again someday.
Chris replied, saying he was very sad, really unhappy, but he’d wait for me. He could come see me in Lisbon too, after all he had no commitments in Paris, nothing to keep him there; he didn’t know Portugal, the light there must be glorious, paradise for a photographer. He’d even worked out a perfect route to take in his old Citroën, using minor roads, his imagination fired by the names of villages along the way—Zambugo, Picoto, so pretty! He hoped I’d invite him to join me—which I didn’t, for obvious reasons. This move abroad was also convenient because it meant that, because of the cost, I had to stop our phone conversations. I wanted him to forget my voice so that I could talk to him a few weeks later without running the risk of being unmasked in my other identity. But I wasn’t too worried. First of all, you don’t hear a voice in the same way on the phone as you do in person. And anyway, to make a connection like that, you’d have to imagine it was possible.
I started engineering our first meeting. It had to be natural, as if chance was taking responsibility for shaping destiny. Accosting him on Facebook or meeting through some intermediary was out of the question. I wanted to play this differently, to be unique. Luckily he’d told me what time he’d be arriving at Montparnasse Station on Monday the twelfth. I would wait for him at the end of the platform—I was sure I’d recognize him even in a crowd, he’d sent me several pictures of himself, and he was tall, with that distinctive hair color, rare on a man, chestnut verging on red, auburn hair. He should be alone. I guessed that to reach Sevran, he’d take the Métro, then the high-speed RER, and it would be there, sitting opposite him in the carriage, that I would talk to him, we would meet. I had three weeks before me in which to prepare, I wanted to be beautiful, with not one gray hair, not one pound overweight, sexy but also reassuring, I wanted to be likable, I wanted to be loved.
So it’s now Monday. The Métro isn’t crowded, I sit down opposite him. I’m forty-eight but I don’t look it, he looks up, sees me. I smile at him, he shifts his legs, smiles at me too, sadly—he must still be thinking about his beautiful “one who got away.” I wait for one station, time enough to regain some semblance of calm. He’s handsome, with a sort of nobility to his face, his eyes an unusual gray-green color, but there’s something tired, almost bitter about him that ages him, and there are quite a few gray hairs in among the russet. I feel pleasantly satisfied about this, first because this means the age difference is almost imperceptible, I’m sure of that; but also because I now have a mission: I’m going to make this man happy. I’m frightened, though, I daren’t make a move. But I’m scared he’s about to get off so I pretend to look at him searchingly and I say, “Excuse me. I feel like I know you. You’re not a friend of Joe’s, are you? You’re a photographer, right?”
He has all his equipment in an open bag on his knee so I look pretty dumb. But he raises his eyebrows in surprise.
“You mean Joël S?” he asks. “Yes, why? Do you know him?”
“I’m Claire Millecam, his former—well, a former friend.”
“Oh yes!” he says guardedly. Joe must have talked about me in strictly sexual terms, and he’s embarrassed, hindered by the recollection. Or perhaps it’s that my name is a painful reminder of his lost love—I’m suddenly annoyed with myself for giving my own name to my rival, how stupid, what poor judgment! But perhaps the opposite is true, perhaps it’s thanks to my name that I too can work my way into his imagination.
“We no longer see each other, Joe and I, we fell out,” I explain, then add casually, “But don’t you live with him?”
“Not anymore. We fell out very recently, but we did it properly, real angry,” he smiles conspiratorially. “Joe falls out with everyone. We could set up a club.”
He’s silent for a while, looks at me very kindly—the visual equivalent of his first messages—courteous, humorous, and with restrained curiosity. I’m afraid that this very restraint will make him stop right there, so I pick up quickly.
“He sent me some selfies of the two of you, that’s how I recognized you, and one time he sent me some of your pictures. I really liked them, actually—landscapes, places you’d seen on your travels. Do you do portraits too?”
“Yes, yes,” he laughs. “And not just baobabs and giant pandas. People too.”
I say bashfully that I’m just finishing a monograph on Marguerite Duras and my editor will need a portrait for the press.
“He usually sends the photographer he works with. But I could ask him to change…If you’d be interested?”
“Of course I’d be interested. To be honest, I’m looking for work, I’m down to my last cent. That would be real cool.” He looks at me more closely, more appreciatively. “And it would be a pleasure too. When would you like to do it?”
I blush, not because of the compliment but the subtext of “do it,” it sends a shiver through me as if he’s put his hand on my knee. I also feel the hot rush of jealousy at the easy way he strikes up an acquaintance, being so frank with another person, so confidently straightforward. I think of all those women on Facebook, all the women in the Métro, on the train, all the women in every street.
“Um, I don’t know. Do you live in Paris?”
“No, I’m staying in Sevran, with my parents—temporarily, I hope. But I can come over whenever you like in my old Citroën, then we can take some shots in the country, it’ll make a change. Unless you’d rather have the perennial author pose sitting at the Café Flore, chin in hand.”
I laugh, nod my head.
“So it’s a deal, then.”
I ask for his phone number, and he takes mine.
“Oh, I have to get off here,” he says.
“I’ll call you,” I say as he gathers his things.
“Cool, glad I met you. Speak soon.” And he steps off. I watch him walk along the platform with his bag on his back. As the train sets off again I notice a rose wrapped in cellophane in the metal trash can, tragicomic in this incongruous vase. Is that a bad omen? I don’t even consider it. I think he likes me. I catch sight of myself and my blue-gray eyes in the black window. Yes, he likes me.
We very soon moved in together—or rather he immediately came to live at my place. He couldn’t afford to pay Paris rents and I had the space, particularly when the kids weren’t there. I’d always promised myself that never again would I make the conjugal mistake of sharing a bedroom. I wanted to preserve the virginal, intense feeling I had when we first kissed, just after the photo session. We stood over his camera temple to temple, looking at the portraits he’d taken, and we turned to face each other at the same moment; our lips touched softly, then his tongue probed my mouth, inside my mouth…He left quite soon after that, he had a meeting. Oh, let it happen again, let it be just as powerful, both slower and faster than normal time, like an accelerated slow motion of the pulse of life, an ephemeral sense of eternity, oh, give me back this beginning again! It was in the hopes of recreating that first time every time that I adapted the living room for Chris to use. If he feels free, he’ll stay, I thought. Love means staying when you have the option to leave. I put the TV into the dining room for the kids, I bought a sofa bed and a desk so he could work on his photographs, he put a sort of Japanese screen between the two rooms, hung his few clothes in my closet, and our life together began. We actually slept together almost every night, mostly in my bed, occasionally on the sofa, I sometimes went and joined him in the middle of the night, waking him with my caresses, he always responded, I attached a lot of importance to his pleasure because it can be confused with love.
“I can feel your love,” he would say when he was close to climaxing in my mouth, and he’d whisper “my love” in my ear before we fell asleep in each other’s arms, as every coupling reinforced our growing knowledge of each other. But I would often leave again in the early hours, afraid that my puffy eyes and unmade-up face would remind him of what he seemed to forget. And while I pretended to scoff at women’s masquerading, I maintained a carefully affected naturalness, a youthfulness that matched how young I felt inside.
He asked me to call him Chris rather than Christophe, not knowing I’d been calling him Chris for months, that I murmured his name to myself twenty times a day, and to my pillow, like a teenager. He very quickly took to calling me “Ever”—a silly nickname that grew out of “Clever Claire.” “Ever, my forever, let’s run away forever this weekend,” he’d say when we headed to Dieppe in his car to eat mussels and fries, or we’d drive just for the pleasure of it. “You’re Ever in my dreams,” he’d whisper as he held me to him at night, or, closing his eyes and running his fingers over my face, he’d say, “Ever the mystery,” and that would make me shudder. But I swiftly batted away the thought that plagued me in the early days: he called me Ever to avoid saying the name Claire, the other girl’s name.
We didn’t go out much, or separately, didn’t mix with each other’s friends, by tacit agreement we kept away from them. He’d sometimes dog-sit for an ex—“she’s just a friend, nothing more,” he said, laughing at my silence—and I very occasionally saw a coworker or a tennis partner but didn’t mention Chris to them. We led what could literally be called a private life. But we didn’t deprive each other of anything, and rarely of our own selves. The apartment was laid out in such a way that he could work in his corner and I in mine. I went off to teach, he went out to take photos, we were soon back home together. When the kids were there, he showed them how best to frame a shot, they listened to rock together or watched TV. I don’t know whether they really got the fact that we were together, because of the separate bedrooms, but they adored Chris—“He’s so cool,” they chorused. It’s true that his casual approach was fantastic for defusing rows. When we were alone, we’d spend ages just lying listening to music or reading, or we’d embark on complicated recipes in the kitchen only to end up in the local bistro. We got along even when there was silence between us, and there was always laughter at the end of every disagreement.
The question of money came up and was dealt with very early on. He didn’t have any, his parents couldn’t lend him any, he got his tax credits and took on any little jobs that came his way so long as they were related to photography. I already knew all this, but I listened attentively because this was where it was all being played out, I could tell. Something that continues to be so ordinary for a woman—being financially dependent on another person, often an older man—is still an ordeal for a man. And the age difference didn’t help at all. The word “gigolo” hovered nearby, the word “cougar” threatened, they had to be dispelled. So I told him money was a movable thing, that what goes around comes around, I was the one who had it today, he would have it tomorrow, it didn’t matter. He liked this line of reasoning, it meant I believed in his talent, that I was just giving him an advance on his future success. And I did some networking to find him work: pictures of monuments, professional portraits. He meanwhile offered to put together photo portfolios for actresses, and I struggled to stifle my jealousy. He never missed an opportunity to compensate for his lack of funds with little kindnesses: a rose, some croissants, a cocktail at a bar. The rest of his earnings paid for his gas, the upkeep of his car, and his photographic materials. The crook of his neck, the place Claire Antunes had so longed to rest her lips, was soft and warm to mine.
Two months passed like this, filled with sweet contentment. We were happy in the way you all dream of being. Then one day the trouble started, and it was my fault, entirely my fault, because I’m crazy. This is how. With my degree-level students I was looking at Tasso’s influence on European writers and artists from the sixteenth century onward (teaching, which had sometimes been burdensome to me, was now a pleasure. Everything I did seemed to be immediately balanced by Chris’s presence). So we were studying the story of Renaud and Armide as told by Tasso in Jerusalem Delivered. During the First Crusade the valiant knight Renaud is imprisoned by a beautiful pagan sorceress, Armide. She intends to kill him along with all his Christian companions, but falls in love with him. To secure his love in return, she makes him drink a magic potion which puts him entirely and lastingly in thrall to her. The knight immediately forgets his sacred mission and languishes in the wonderful life the sorceress offers him. She strips him of his armor and sword, and clothes him in sumptuous robes; she arranges feasts, games, and concerts for him, lavishes him with a thousand caresses and invents a thousand exquisite delights. Their love unfolds over many months, steeped in pleasure and idleness. But Godfrey of Bouillon’s crusaders cannot accept their friend’s fate and refuse to abandon him to such a contemptible existence. They eventually manage to reach him while Armide is away, and find Renaud lying on a bed decked in fine fabrics, surrounded by rare sweetmeats and carafes of heady wine. They hold a shield up to him so that he can see what he has become, and Renaud, who now only ever sees himself in the magic mirror held up to him by his beautiful captor, is suddenly confronted with his true reflection, a pampered man sprawled among his cushions, dressed as a gallant, and utterly disarmed. His former companions have no trouble persuading him to rejoin them in pursuit of conquests. He rises to his feet, picks up his arms and prepares to leave with them.
It is at this point that the legend and, alas, my own narrative meet. Discovering Renaud’s decision, Armide is replete with so much love that she cannot believe her lover—who has been deeply besotted with her for months—could leave her. She thinks that the strength of their passion, constantly reinforced with the tenderest gestures, is now so great that no spell is needed to sustain it. In Lully’s opera they even sing an admirable duet, I almost cried when I played it to my students:
No, I would rather lose my life
Than extinguish my flame,
No, nothing can change my heart.
No, I would rather lose my life,
Than leave the arms of so charming a lover.
And so, putting her faith in the power of love, Armide throws herself at Renaud’s feet, confesses to the spells she has cast on him, and swears she will abandon them. “I love you,” she tells him. “I betrayed you, I lied to you. But the only truth is that I love you. Keep me with you. For your love, I will undertake anything, I will even convert to your religion if you ask it of me.” Renaud hesitates, gazes lovingly and sadly at the enchantress’s beautiful face, but is pained by such betrayal. In the end, the hero’s duty is stronger than all other emotion. He tears himself away from Armide’s sweet supplications and leaves her forever.
I told this story to my students and couldn’t get it out of my mind, I was obsessed with it. One question went around and around inside my head: if I admitted to my previous imposture, would Chris still love me? Would he be shocked to have been manipulated like that? Enough to leave me?
In fact, if I’m to be completely honest, that wasn’t really the question that haunted me. The real one, the only erosive question I had, was this: Was Chris still thinking about Claire Antunes? Whenever he looked thoughtful or seemed distant, less attentive, the idea tormented me. Did he still love her? Did he love her more than me, with a purer love, like Renaud’s for his sacred mission? With an unconditional love? Wasn’t I just a fallback, a consolation for losing her? My jealousy was corrosive.
In order to escape this overriding fear, I decided to put our love to the test. But I had many more doubts than Armide, even if nothing about Chris’s behavior justified them for any length of time: he showed every sign of tenderness and desire. I had no objective reason to test the strength of our connection. I don’t know why I did it. But I did it. I brought Claire Antunes back to life.
I made careful preparations, and could think of nothing else; I wanted to ratify our love. First I took out the phone that I’d hidden in a shoebox at the bottom of my closet. I hadn’t terminated the two-euro contract, I’d forgotten to. I charged up the battery and listened, quivering, to the last message Chris had left me months earlier. His sad voice made my heart constrict, but with jealousy—a towering, destructive, deranged jealousy. His past annihilated my present life. So I fine-tuned my strategy. I was well aware that I should abandon the idea, shouldn’t be playing with fire, but I couldn’t back down now, my fear had completely taken over.
The idea was that Claire Antunes would reappear in the form of a lover’s ultimatum: having been unable to forget Chris for all these months of silence and distance, she had broken up with her fiancé and now wanted to meet him at last, meet Chris and live with him, because she loved him, she was no longer in any doubt of that. She didn’t know what was happening in his life, but if he still loved her too, he should drop everything now and meet her that very evening at the Café Français. She would be there from nine till ten, and no more. He shouldn’t try to call her, he should just come, prove his love by being there. If he didn’t show up he would never hear from her again. So this was the abrupt but thrilling message Chris would be receiving from me, in the form of a text from my secret cell phone, that same evening, as we were sitting down on the terrace of our favorite restaurant, just a block from my apartment.
At first I only pictured this test as a “double blind”: if Chris went to meet Claire Antunes, of course he wouldn’t find her there and he’d lose me or I’d lose him, I wasn’t sure which. Unless I forgave him. But if the experiment was going to bring an end to my jealous suspicions, I gradually started contemplating confronting him at the Café Français with the gorgeous young brunette whose photo he’d gazed at for so long: my niece Katia. I’d hardly seen her since her suicide attempt, and obviously always in secret; Chris didn’t even know she existed. After a long stay at a clinic in the Southwest, Katia had come to Paris to look for work. She’d been living on the rue Roquette for a month, alone and still depressed. I didn’t actually know what had driven her to taking a whole packet of sleeping pills not long after she’d moved to Rodez. A relationship that went wrong, most likely, but she’d never wanted to tell me about it, and I hadn’t pressed her. Anyway, plagued by my jealous frenzy, I arranged to meet her at the Café Français at nine that evening. In my nightmarish projections, Chris would walk over to where she was sitting at a table near the bar, he would sit down opposite her and take her hands, in rapt silence—dreams don’t often become reality. And the scene would replay ad nauseam until I shook myself out of it to avoid howling with pain.
Evening comes. I suggest to Chris that we should eat at Chez Tony, a local restaurant we use regularly, there’s nothing in the fridge. “Do you want me to go get pizza?” he asks, putting his arms around me—his belly against my back, his mouth in my hair. I say no, it’s a beautiful evening, it would be nice to sit out on the terrace. Hidden under the paperwork on my desk, I’ve already prepared Claire Antunes’s text on my secret phone, I need only press Send, I could still choose not to, but I do it. Then I close the front door and summon the elevator. We go down, walk to the restaurant, he has his arm around my waist, we sit down, look at the menu. Chris doesn’t check his phone, maybe he didn’t hear the text alert, or, more likely, he’s savoring this moment, not expecting anyone or anything, he looks relaxed. I can’t take it anymore, every inch of me is trembling on the inside, my stomach is churning with impatience to see what he really is, what I am to him, what I am. The mechanism has been set in motion, that same old fear resurfaces, the fear of not being the love object. It’s not me, it’s the other woman: that’s what I’ve always thought, always. One of La Rochefoucauld’s maxims comes to mind, one that I’d set as an essay topic for my students: “In friendship as in love, we are often made happier by the things we don’t know than by those we do.” It’s probably true. But it’s now too late not to know; any second now I’ll know.
“What time is it?” I ask. “Maybe we have time for a movie afterward?”
He doesn’t reply, he’s studying the wine menu, a smile hovering on his lips.
“Can you have a look?” I say, gesturing to his jeans pocket. “I don’t have any battery.”
With his eyes still on the menu, Chris takes out his phone, opens it almost in slow motion, glances at it, freezes, frowns.
“Eight forty-two.” His voice is slightly strangulated, or am I the one who’s short of breath? He reads the text, and now his eyes are wavering too, not sure where to look.
This hurts.
“Would you mind going to the tobacconist? I feel like having a cigarette,” I say to escape the suffering caused by the sight of him—make him go, make him leave, spare me the spectacle of his indecision!
He stands up like an automaton, stammers, “Yes, yeah, I’ll go,” puts a hand on my shoulder—such a strong, brusque hand, such a contrast to the sweet sensation it gives me. Through the opening in his shirt I can see the delicate skin of his neck, the crook where I like to rest my lips, I’d like to do that once more before he goes but he’s already walking away.
“I’ll be back,” he says.
The waiter comes over, I order a carafe of rosé. When the waiter brings it I fill both our glasses. I take little sips from mine, my eyes pinned on his.
“I’ll be back.”
That’s where Claire’s—Madame Millecam’s—novel ends. Or at least the section written in one sitting. Because there’s more in the notebook, as you can see, but after several blank pages, as if to mark the passage of time, and it’s in a different pen and more uneven handwriting. There are lots of crossings-out, unlike the first section. Some paragraphs have been scrapped, completely blackened with felt-tip pen, others are merely legible jottings. Most likely Claire struggled to decide on an ending: she’d been so open to the different possible outcomes, done so much dreaming and dreading and fantasizing about her love, her jealousy, her desire and her doubts, that it was probably difficult for her to deign to give it a real ending, that is to say a single ending. Mind you, a film screenplay could easily stop right there—and so could a novel actually: she stays sitting at the restaurant table, holding her glass of rosé. The last shot is cut just before she starts drinking the other glass, or perhaps just after, either could work. The waiting, the despair, and the passing time are measured by the contents of those glasses. Unless you opt for a happy ending where we see him coming back around the end of the street, walking toward her as the final credits roll to Patti Smith’s “Because the Night Belongs to Lovers,” or that other song she loved and sometimes played to me on her iPod during our sessions, “One Day Baby We’ll Be Old.”
But I’ll read you the end as Claire eventually wrote it—Claire or someone else, I’m not really sure, the writing looks slightly different. It’s interesting because we hear the man’s point of view. It’s Chris who narrates the final section. And given what’s gone before, this ending isn’t without logic, you’ll see why. For me, it was this ending that made me do what I did. So listen—just a couple more minutes.
I didn’t know what to do when I read that text. Ever asked me to go buy some smokes, which was convenient, I needed to get my head straight. I walked to the end of the street like a zombie, then I checked Claire on Facebook. Her wall hadn’t changed, the last posts were several months old: a photo of Portugal like something from a tourist brochure, really moronic, and that was all. I skimmed through some of our old conversations on Facebook, my legs felt wobbly. Seeing her photo again definitely had an effect on me: that luminous unambiguous beauty, the smile on those plump lips, her perfect teeth, her long dark hair gleaming silkily. And her rounded breasts outlined under her sensible sweater. She could have been a model. The sort of girl every guy dreams of, the perfect trophy girl. The shop was closed, I could have bought cigarettes from the Brasserie Georges but that was a long way, Ever would be waiting.
So I went up to the apartment, I’d have to be seriously unlucky not to find a few Camels lying around there. I found an old packet in the key tray by the door. I sat down for a couple of minutes to think. What was I going to say to Claire? Tell her to get lost by text? That wasn’t very classy. But then her melodramatic comeback wasn’t exactly stylish either. What did she think? That I’d turned to stone, become a statue to eternal love when we had never even met?! Dream on, sweetheart! I didn’t know what to say. “Sorry, Claire, I’m living with someone. Her name’s Claire too.” Or just “So sorry, I’m not in Paris.” Or simply, “Welcome to France. Good luck, Claire. Bye.” Or nothing. Nada. No reply. Fuggedaboutit. While I sat there slumped on the sofa thinking about it, gazing at Ever’s little tartan slippers left under the table, as per usual, I thought back over our weird relationship, Claire’s and mine. She must be a bit crazy to issue that sort of ultimatum when she doesn’t know me. But I liked that, I had to admit. The impulsiveness, the follow-your-instincts approach, overcoming her own scruples, burning her bridges, basically. It was crazy, unreasonable—very like a woman, no?! A far cry from my steady humdrum life, which was sometimes so boring. I couldn’t end up like this, in the silence of cozy domesticity. I had to talk to her, explain things to her. She didn’t want me to call, she wanted me to be there: but I didn’t have to obey her, I could play this whichever way I liked. Okay, so there was a slight risk I’d be bewitched all over again by her voice, because I remembered the hold it had over me in its day. In its day…it was so long ago already. Ever had filled the void, right away, and her love had won mine over—at least, I had a good life with her. And yet I couldn’t make up my mind to go back to her at the restaurant. I needed to talk to Claire first.
I looked at my phone for another minute, staring blankly like an idiot—I was concentrating on what I was going to tell her, or the message I would leave her if, as I thought (or hoped?), she didn’t pick up—and I eventually dialed her number. The phone rang once, twice, three times, after the fourth ring I hung up, my heart pounding, and I didn’t leave a message after the robotic voice. It wasn’t fear that stopped me but the incomprehensible fact that I could hear those rings not only on my phone but also, in exactly the same way and at the same time, in the apartment. I was so stunned by the coincidence that I immediately called Claire back again. Undeniable proof: it was ringing. There was a phone ringing in Ever’s bedroom.
By following the sound, I very soon came across a cheap little device I’d never seen in Ever’s hands, she only used her iPhone. I flipped it open with a feeling that something catastrophic was happening: this simple action would blow up in my face, I was sure of it, I’d just unearthed the explosive truth.
The texts I’d exchanged with Claire Antunes, the photos I’d sent her…they were all there. I scrolled frantically on the tiny keyboard but my torpedoed brain couldn’t come up with a realistic explanation. Had Ever pirated my phone and copied my texts? This woman I trusted so completely. But no, no, because the number on this phone, this fucking phone was Claire Antunes’s number. And in the contacts list I was now opening there was only one person: me. Only one number: mine. I pressed the button to listen to voicemail and just stood there, hanging in the emptiness of the bedroom like an unmatched sock on a washing line: my own voice, my voice as a pathetic dick (all mealy-mouthed, honeyed, miserable) whispered inane garbage in my ear, plans, regrets, promises. I sounded so stupid, no, I was.
I stood there poleaxed for a good five minutes, my head spinning, before vaguely getting the hoax. It was so twisted that I couldn’t make the connection with Ever, who was so straight, so honorable. As well as feeling disbelief, mingled with an aftertaste of humiliation, there was a degree of admiration. Women, all of them, suddenly seemed to me to be a superior species, completely unknowable, spectacular, in a way. And in another way, totally out to lunch. Why the need for this whole circus?
Jealousy. Women’s morbid jealousy.
That didn’t explain everything, far from it, but it brought an end to any painful questions as to the part that (without even realizing it) I’d been playing for all this time in this obscure scenario. Jealousy is love. Love is an explanation that offers some relief. After the initial disbelief, another question needed answering: What was supposed to happen next in this ambush? I wasn’t meant to discover the tangle of lies, what was I supposed to do? Go back and sit down at the table as if nothing had happened and drink a glass of rosé with her? (Her victory.) Or go meet Claire Antunes at Bastille and…and what? Ever had probably planned to turn up herself and gloat at my amazement and shame, before ranting about my unfaithfulness, even if it was virtual, or bludgeoning me with insults. I was torn between fury and laughter, but mostly I had to accept one thing…and Ever’s smile, beaming at me from the photo of us hanging over her desk, was no consolation for the fact that was now so blindingly obvious: Claire Antunes didn’t exist. That angel was just a fake, my dream in avatar form; I’d been in love with thin air. The physical, organic sensation of being manipulated made me want to see this through to the end. At least I could keep the tangle going a bit longer and make her really suffer. What a monster she was, toying with her own fear after toying with me. I was lost, I didn’t know whether I admired her or despised her, whether her craziness thrilled me or disgusted me.
I jumped to my feet, grabbed a travel bag, and stuffed some clothes and all my photo equipment into it, leaving my bedroom conspicuously empty. A real departure or a setup? I didn’t know myself. It was nearly nine o’clock. Before I left, I erased all trace of my two calls from her cell phone.
She was drinking a glass of rosé on the terrace at Chez Tony, sitting half turned away so that I had only a fleeting view of her profile, which looked sad: the carafe was almost empty. I continued on my way, making sure she didn’t see me, and almost ran to the Café Français. I still loved her, but who?
So now I’m sitting at the Café Français, drinking a pastis, looking out over the square, the cars, the buses. I should take a picture to immortalize the moment—the mortal moment. What if Ever doesn’t show up? What am I doing here with my bag packed if Ever doesn’t show, if the breakup has already happened? Will I sleep at my parents’ place in Sevran tonight, and drink coffee with Mom tomorrow morning and she’ll ask me why I always mess everything up? No, no, and no again, I want her to come, I want to make her pay for this perverse game. She loves me, I’m going to act incredibly cold before taking her in my arms—maybe. It’ll depend on her smile, I’m not her slave either. Memories come back to me, the past scrolling by as if I’ve had an accident. How did she hatch such a twisted plot? Inventing a life, inventing Gilles, inventing Portugal, inventing the impossible? Why did she need…
That’s when I saw her. It was like an apparition. I turned around, looking for the waiter, to ask for another one, and there she was. All in black, her brown hair pulled back, a sad expression, but it’s her, I recognize her. My heart races, I don’t understand anything, but what a lot of anything! She’s a way off but we make eye contact. She looks at me, then looks away, with no change of expression, her eyes simply moving on to something else. This is all so confusing, I’m not designed for so much emotion, for so many enigmas. My chest is like a jigsaw puzzle threatening to explode.
So I stood up, walked over to her table, and put my bag down on it. Claire? I asked almost sharply. She looked up, her mouth half open, her skin lustrous, her eyes look surprised, hovering on the brink of a smile, she does something adorable with one eyebrow, raising it slightly. My name’s Katia, she says.
And that’s it. The end of the notebook. Strange, isn’t it? A document, but so much more. So how to explain? When I finished reading this, it seemed obvious to me that this woman’s life, well, this patient’s life, was dominated by guilt. Guilt so all-consuming that even when she imagined how the story could have been written differently and afforded her some happiness in real life, she came up with a sad ending, inflicting punishment on herself, leaving her alone with her remorse. Her pathology incontrovertibly derives from pronounced hysteria as presented in the definition we all know: a desire for dissatisfaction. It had to fail, that’s how this story could be summarized. I won’t insult you by reminding you how important masochism is to numerous subjects, particularly women—my own thesis was about “Destructiveness and the Death Wish in Women’s Neuroses.” In Claire’s case, in Madame Millecam’s case, well, in her novel, we could even go so far as to say there is a desperate quest for a “catastrophic moment,” a willful search for proof of her inability to be loved, I would readily call this a “disaster craving.” It is probably coupled with an unconscious desire to atone for something, to self-flagellate. Her niece’s suicide (which she refutes in her novel because it’s so unbearable for her) is clearly a factor in this—she punishes herself for failing to protect Katia despite the promise she made her brother—but her guilt is most likely rooted further back in the past: a repressed childhood incident, maternal postnatal depression, wishing someone in her family were dead, what do I know?
Nevertheless—and this is where you certainly can direct the blame at me—instead of helping her delve through her childhood to find out what it was that kept her in this depressive, guilty frame of mind for three years, switching from aggression to passivity and in a state of near aboulia, instead of doing that, I decided to try to find something in real life to extricate her from her isolation—her internment: to get her out of here. She reminded me of Roger, a patient I met when I was training at the Clinique des Ormeaux in Blois. He’d been running the beekeeping workshops for twenty years, it was all he did, tending the hives, harvesting the honey, planning to rear new queens…As my mentor, Dr. Aury, pointed out at the time, he’d turned into a bee. Well, it was rather like that for Claire: she’d turned into waiting. She waited, it took up all her time: waiting. What was she waiting for? Nothing, that’s just the point. Was she waiting for a dead man, for him to come back, waiting for love, for it to come along, waiting for forgiveness? To be allowed it? Perhaps. But it’s more likely she was waiting for nothing. It wasn’t negative, that’s not a negative statement, even if it is less objectively productive than tending bees. Waiting had become her whole persona, the waiting had dissolved the object of the wait. She had turned to stone in that state, one two three eternal sunshine, Penelope without the suitors, Penelope without a returning Ulysses, but who still doggedly unpicks whatever sort of life she may be living.
When I started the inquiry about which you’ve been given information, my sole objective was to find her an escape route, to remove the burden of her crushing guilt, to set her in motion again, so that she could at least get out of this terrifying freeze-frame. Besides, I intuitively felt, and what happened next proved I was right on this point, I felt events hadn’t actually happened as she said. I knew that she first arrived here distraught and rambling after a serious decompensation, then returned after each discharge prey to renewed bouts of delirium—I’d read the reports. At first I thought she might be lying, fictionalizing from the start, inventing everything she said—to hide something else, or maintain control. Because she tries to control everything, using lies or laughter. My predecessor made a note of her fondness for fiction and amusing stories—stories in general. She likes telling stories. In fact he pointed out the difference, in what she related, between irony, which can hurt or destroy, and humor, which is a vital restorative force. Our patient is very good at using both, attacking or relaxing her listener, but it’s always a way of protecting herself. Jokes keep reality at arm’s length, irony tackles tragedy but also keeps it at bay, she uses her wit to survive. Or otherwise she invents, fabricates. Her idea of freedom is to be brilliant, and fables are her way of escaping unadulterated madness. A sort of organized delirium, you see. But it doesn’t matter whether or not it’s true. What matters is her saying it. Or believing it.
Anyway, one way or another, whether she was doing it deliberately or not, I thought there was something strange about this story: Chris, the Internet womanizer, the hustler who was used to plenty of action, committing suicide for a girl he’s only seen in photos…I know that sort of thing happens, that you can die because something doesn’t happen, that psychotic decompensation is always a possibility, that there are little boys lost inside grown men, that grandmas are really still little girls, but to go that far? It just didn’t feel right to me. Something didn’t fit. I didn’t believe it. Yes, he’d gone off-radar. There was no trace of him on the Internet, particularly as Claire had never known his family name, only his first name, Christophe, and his Facebook name, KissChris—it’s extraordinary when you come to think of it, a relationship between two pseudonyms: like something in a novel, in fact, fictional creations.
So I decided to track down Joe, the only apparent witness to the whole story, in order to shed some light on what happened. I wanted to know, I have to admit, there was an element of pure curiosity—about human resourcefulness, human logic, human beings. What Claire had told me about Joe painted a classic picture of narcissistic perversion, and I was right about that. I managed, with what was an apparently casual question and without disclosing any of my plans to Claire, to get Joe’s family name from her. He wasn’t in the phone directory. I knew he had a house in Lacanau, I’m sure I could have found him that way, but I did something easier: I looked for him on Facebook. And there he was. I contacted him via private messaging, saying I was Claire’s doctor and I’d like to meet him. He agreed.
I’ll spare you the details, you’ve read the transcripts I made of our conversations. There are instantly recognizable signs of the complete emotional indifference of a narcissist, but also a degree of naive pride in his successful manipulations. He admitted almost immediately that Chris wasn’t dead, that he’d invented the whole thing as revenge for Claire’s “betrayal.” What betrayal? I asked.
“Trying to pick up my buddy when we were together. One evening I recognized her voice in a message she’d left for Chris, those mannered intonations, the fucking idiot wanted me to listen to it too so I could savor the smooth sound of her voice. Claire Antunes? My ass! Fucked up, yes! Bitch! I didn’t say anything to Chris, how was that going to make me look? I’m not some guy who gets cheated on, no way; but revenge is a dish best eaten cold. What a whore! And what’s she up to now? Are you doing her, is that what’s going on? She wants them younger and younger! So she didn’t die of a broken heart, then? Ah, ah! I’d’ve been surprised! I could see she took it hard when I fed her that red herring. But she didn’t wait long before finding herself some consolation, from what I can see. I tried to track her down a year ago—I’m the sentimental type! No, I’m kidding, I thought I’d do her again, she’s still pretty good for her age, isn’t she?—but she’d gone out of circulation: she wasn’t on Facebook, there was no answer on her number, she’d stopped teaching at the university, she’d moved…I even went and stood outside her ex’s house one time (the guy remarried, by the way, a real bombshell, a brunette with these tits, I can’t tell you). I saw her kids, that pair of brats. But no sign of her. Well, I gave up. So how is she, how is the bimbo? You’re her doctor? So she’s sick? She doesn’t have AIDS, does she?”
I didn’t reply, in my personal capacity I had to restrain myself from punching him, I have to say. I asked him about Chris. Joe said evasively that he was no longer in touch with him. That after “Claire Antunes” defected, going off to get married in Portugal, Chris was a bit depressed, so Joe recommended he change his Facebook profile, shake himself up a bit, which he did. Christophe—KissChris—just turned into Toph. Joe discreetly blocked Claire’s number on Chris’s phone, just in case. “Undesirable,” that’s what she’d become, “and the bitch deserved it,” he told me. Then the two of them went to Mexico on a reportage Joe had managed to find, and Chris met a girl out there. Joe and he fell out over money, Joe came home alone and it was then that he saw Claire again and announced the invented suicide.
Joe asked me where Claire was living now, and obviously I didn’t tell him that thanks to him, she’s been wasting away in a psychiatric clinic for three years. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.
I went home completely dazed, but I had what I wanted. Just to be sure, I looked for Toph on Facebook. Not being a “friend,” I didn’t have access to much, but there was a picture of a man of about forty with auburn hair, a photographer born in Sevran, living in Mexico City, with a signature that ended in a little flower. A father of one.
That was when I made my second mistake, I know. I showed a lack of judgment, or of professional lucidity. I thought that truthfulness would have a beneficial effect on this patient. That by drawing her out of the imaginary world that was destroying her, by showing her she’d been manipulated, that she was the victim—she hadn’t killed anyone, she was the one who’d been killed—I’d be helping her, rescuing her, even. I wanted to save her.
I don’t know. Maybe. You couldn’t call it countertransference because she didn’t transfer much onto me, I don’t think. But I probably failed to take advice, to refer to one of you. I entered into an interpersonal relationship with her.
Love? I don’t know. Either way, I wanted her to start loving again. Me or someone else. Someone else…or me.
The opposite happened. I thought I was bringing her fresh hope: no one had died for her. And I brought her despair: no one had died for her. I realized too late that this death was what was keeping her alive. This tragic passion justified her existence: she’d been loved to distraction, to destruction. Deep down, she was living here, at La Forche, only so she could continue to live with this love. A psychiatric clinic is the perfect place for her, the place to be: the mad are the same species as those who are in love, we even say “madly in love.” There was no one here to disturb her morbid enjoyment. Her tragedy was glorious. She spoke to me so readily in our interviews for the sheer pleasure of staying in the story. And I destroyed everything. I thought the truth would bring her back to life. But not everyone is ready for the truth. People couldn’t give a damn about it, the truth, I mean. What matters is what they believe. They write over the truth. They make it disappear with all their fabrications and narratives. And they live off that, off the stories they tell. Their lives are a palimpsest. No point trying to see what’s underneath. Meanwhile, we psychiatrists claim to want the truth. That’s garbage. A psychiatric hospital is the very opposite: it protects from the truth.
Her face when I showed her Toph’s profile on my cell…a terrible memory. I understood right then, in that fraction of a second, that I was wrong, it was a disaster. She recognized him, I saw the look in her eyes when she identified him. Her world fell apart, she slid off her chair, and as she collapsed to the floor, she just said, “The shame.” I don’t know whether she was talking about herself, Chris, or Joe. Or possibly me. Because I was ashamed, it’s true. That’s all I can say. I’m ashamed and I’m suffering. The pervert is actually me, by all accounts. But I didn’t want this, oh no, I didn’t want it.
Afterward she had her really acute episodes, she hallucinated, hallucinating the world. She hallucinated to stay alive. But dying is a higher power. And I didn’t know she wasn’t taking her medication, that she was stockpiling it and hiding it at the foot of the fig tree.
Do what you want with me. I want only one thing: for her to live. For her to get out of this.
No.
Yes.
Yes.
Perhaps. Perhaps I do love her, yes, after all, yes, why not use the right word. I love her. She moves me. I want to take her in my arms. I think about her, I carry her in my heart, I cradle her in my memory. She touches me and captivates me, yes, I’m a captive. I want to see her. “Love is being there.” There is no other truth. And I like being there for her. I’d like to bandage her wounds. She may be mad, after all, in the way we understand the word. Certainly. But it’s the mad who heal us, isn’t it?