Adultery (6 page)

I am once again the mistress of my thoughts and my actions.
What seemed impossible this morning has become reality this afternoon. I can feel again, and I can love something I don’t possess. The wind has ceased to bother me and has become instead a blessing, like the caress of a god on my cheek. I have my soul back.

Hundreds of years seem to pass during the short time the kiss lasts. We separate slowly, and, as he gently strokes my hair, we look deep into each other’s eyes.

And we find exactly what was there before.

Sadness.

Now with the addition of a stupid, irresponsible gesture that, at least in my case, will only make matters worse.

We spend another half an hour together, talking about the city and its inhabitants as if nothing had happened. We seemed very close when we arrived at the park, and we became one when we kissed. Now, however, we are two complete strangers, trying to keep the conversation going just long enough so that we can each go our separate ways without too much embarrassment.

No one saw us—we’re not in a restaurant. Our marriages are safe.

I consider apologizing, but know it’s not necessary. After all, it was only a kiss.

I CAN’T
honestly say that I feel victorious, but at least I’ve recovered some self-control. At home, everything carries on as usual; before I was in a terrible state, and now I’m feeling better. No one asks me how I am.

I’m going to follow Jacob König’s example and talk to my husband about my strange state of mind. I’ll confide in him, and I’m sure he’ll be able to help me.

On the other hand, I feel so good today; why spoil it by confessing to things I don’t even understand myself? I continue to struggle. I don’t believe that what I’m going through can be put down to a lack of chemical elements in my body, as I’ve read online about “compulsive sadness.”

I’m not sad today. It’s just one of those phases we all go through. I remember when my high-school class organized its farewell party; we laughed for two hours and then, at the end, we all sobbed because we knew we were parting forever. The sadness lasted for a few days or weeks, I can’t quite remember. But the mere fact that I don’t remember says something very important: it’s over. Turning thirty was hard, and perhaps I just wasn’t ready for it.

My husband goes upstairs to put the children to bed. I pour myself a glass of wine and go out into the garden.

It’s still windy. It’s a wind we know well here; it can blow for three, six, or even nine days. In France—a more romantic country than Switzerland—it’s known as the mistral and it always brings bright, cold weather. It’s high time these clouds went away. Tomorrow it will be sunny.

I keep thinking about the conversation in the park, that kiss. I feel no regrets at all. I did something I’d never done
before, and that in itself has begun to break down the walls imprisoning me.

It doesn’t really matter what Jacob König thinks. I can’t spend my life trying to please other people.

I finish my glass of wine and refill it, and for the first time in many months, I feel something other than apathy or a sense of futility.

My husband comes downstairs dressed for a party and asks how long it will take me to get ready. I’d forgotten that we’d agreed to go dancing tonight.

I race upstairs, and when I come back down, I see that our Filipino babysitter has arrived and has already spread her books across the living-room table. The children are in bed asleep and shouldn’t be any trouble, and so she uses her time to study. She seems to have an aversion to television.

We’re ready to leave. I’ve put on my best dress, even at the risk of dressing to the nines for a laid-back party. What does it matter? I need to celebrate.

I WAKE
to the sound of the wind rattling the windows. I blame my husband for not shutting them properly. I feel the need to get up and perform my nightly ritual of going into the children’s bedrooms to check that everything’s all right. And yet something stops me. Is it because I had too much to drink? I start to think about the waves I saw earlier at the lake, about the clouds that have now dissipated and the person who was with me. I remember very little about the nightclub; we both thought the music was horrible and the atmosphere extremely dull. It wasn’t long before we were back at our respective computers.

What about all those things I said to Jacob this afternoon? Shouldn’t I take a little time to think about them myself?

This room is suffocating me. My perfect husband is asleep beside me; he doesn’t seem to have heard the wind rattling the windows. I imagine Jacob lying beside his wife and telling her everything he feels (although I’m sure he won’t say anything about me). He’s relieved to have someone who can help him when he feels most alone. I don’t really believe what he said about her—if it were true, they would have separated. After all, they don’t have any children to worry about!

I wonder if the mistral has woken him up, too, and what he and his wife will talk about now. Where do they live? It wouldn’t be hard to find out. I can find out when I get in to work tomorrow. I wonder: Did they make love tonight? Did he take her passionately, did she moan with pleasure?

The way I behave with him is always a surprise. Oral sex, sensible advice, that kiss in the park. I seem like another person. Who is this woman I become whenever I’m with Jacob?

My provocative adolescent self. The one who was once as
steady as a rock and as strong as the wind ruffling the calm waters of Lake Léman. It’s odd how whenever we meet up with old school friends, we always think they haven’t changed at all, even if the weakest has grown strong, the prettiest has ended up with a monster for a husband, and those who seemed closest have grown apart and not seen one another for years.

With Jacob, though, at least in the early stages of this reunion, I can still go back in time and be the young girl who isn’t afraid of consequences. She’s only sixteen, and the return of Saturn, which will bring maturity, is still a long way off.

I try to sleep, but I can’t. I spend an hour thinking about him obsessively. I remember my next-door neighbor washing his car and how I judged his life to be “pointless,” occupied by useless things. It’s not useless: he probably enjoys himself, taking the opportunity to get some exercise and see life’s simple things as blessings, not curses.

That’s what I need to do: relax a little and enjoy life more. I can’t keep thinking about Jacob. I am replacing my missing joy with something more concrete—a man—but that’s not the point. If I went to a psychiatrist, he’d tell me that this isn’t my problem at all; instead, it’s a lack of lithium, low levels of serotonin, and so on. This didn’t begin with Jacob’s appearance on the scene, and it won’t end with his departure.

But I can’t forget him. My mind repeats the moment of that kiss over and over.

And I realize that my unconscious is transforming an imaginary problem into a real one. That’s what always happens. That’s how illnesses come about.

I never want to see that man again. He’s been sent by the devil to destabilize something that was already fragile. How could I fall in love so quickly with someone I don’t even know? And who says I’m in love? I’ve been having problems since the
spring. If things were perfectly fine before that, I see no reason why they shouldn’t be again.

I repeat what I said before: It’s just a phase.

I need to stay focused and hold negativity at bay. Wasn’t that my advice to Jacob?

I must stand firm and wait for the crisis to pass. Otherwise, I run the risk of really falling in love, and of feeling permanently what I felt for only a fraction of a second when we had lunch together that first time. And if that happens, things won’t just happen inside me. No, the suffering and pain will spread everywhere.

I lie tossing and turning in bed for what feels like ages before I fall asleep. After what seems only a second, my husband wakes me up. It’s a bright day, the sky is blue, and the mistral is still blowing.

IT’S
breakfast time,” my husband says. “I’d better go and get the kids up.”

Why don’t we swap roles for once? I suggest. You go to the kitchen and I’ll get the kids ready for school.

“Is that a challenge?” he asks. “If it is, you’re going to have the best breakfast you’ve had in years.”

No, it isn’t a challenge, I just want to change things around a bit. So, you don’t think the breakfast I make is good enough?

“Listen, it’s far too early for arguments. Last night we both had a bit too much to drink, and nightclubs really aren’t meant for people our age,” he says. “Anyway, okay, you go and get the children ready.”

He leaves before I can respond. I pick up my smartphone and check what things I have to do today.

I look down the list of commitments that can’t be put off. The longer the list, the more productive I consider my day to be. Many of the tasks are things I promised to do the day before or during the week, but which I haven’t yet done. That’s why the list keeps growing, until it makes me so nervous that I decide to scrap the whole thing and start again. And then I realize that nothing on the list is actually very important.

There’s something that isn’t on the list, though, something I’m definitely not going to forget: finding out where Jacob König lives and taking a moment to drive past his house.

When I go downstairs, the table is perfectly set with fruit salad, olive oil, cheese, whole-grain bread, yogurt, and plums. A copy of the newspaper I work for is placed discreetly to the left. My husband has long since given up reading print media and is consulting his iPad. Our oldest son asks what “blackmail” means. I can’t understand why he wants to know until I see
the front page. There is a large photo of Jacob, one of many he must have sent to the press. He looks thoughtful, reflective. Next to the photo is the headline: “Deputy Reports Blackmail Attempt.”

I didn’t write the article. In fact, while I was at my meeting with Jacob, the editor-in-chief rang to say that I could cancel because they had received a communiqué from the Ministry of Finance and were working on the case. I explained that the meeting had already taken place, that it had happened more quickly than I’d expected and without any need for the “usual tactics.” I was then dispatched to a nearby neighborhood (which considers itself a “city” and even has a prefecture) whose grocery store was caught selling food that’s past its sell-by date. I talked to the owner of the store, to neighbors and friends of neighbors, something I’m sure our readers found made for a more interesting article than some political scandal. It also made the front page, but without the banner headlines. “Grocery Store Fined, No Reports of Food Poisoning.”

Seeing that photo of Jacob right there on our breakfast table troubles me deeply.

I tell my husband that we need to have a talk—tonight.

“We can leave the children with my mother and go to dinner somewhere, just the two of us,” he says. “I need to spend a bit of time with you as well, alone and without any terrible music blaring in our ears. How can people possibly like that?”

IT WAS
a spring morning.

I was sitting in a corner of the playground that was usually deserted and studying the tiles on the school wall. I knew there was something wrong with me.

The other children all thought I acted “better than them,” and I never made any attempt to deny this. On the contrary. I made my mother keep buying me expensive clothes and taking me to school in her pricey foreign car.

But that day in the playground, I realized that I was alone, and might remain alone for the rest of my life. Even though I was only eight years old, it seemed like it was already too late to change and to prove to the other children that I was just like them.

Now, summer.

I was at secondary school, and the boys were always hitting on me, no matter how hard I tried to fend them off. The other girls were green with envy, but pretended not to be and were always hanging around and cozying up to me, hoping to pick up any rejects.

And I rejected almost everyone, because I knew that if anyone ever managed to enter my world, they would find nothing of interest. It was best to maintain an air of mystery with a hint of unattainable pleasures.

On my way home, I noticed a few mushrooms that had sprung up after the rain. They were perfect and intact because everyone knew they were poisonous. For a fraction of a second, I considered eating them. I wasn’t feeling particularly
sad or particularly happy; I just wanted to get my parents’ attention.

I didn’t eat the mushrooms.

Now it’s the first day of autumn, the loveliest season of the year. Soon the leaves will change color and each tree will be different from all the others. On the way to the car park, I decide to take a slightly different route.

I stop in front of the school where I studied. The tile wall is still there. Nothing has changed, except for the fact that I’m no longer alone. In my mind are two men; one will never be mine, but I’ll have dinner tonight with the other one in some special, carefully chosen spot.

A bird flies across the sky, playing with the wind. It flies back and forth, rises and falls, its movements obeying some logic I cannot understand. Perhaps the only logic is that of having fun.

I am not a bird. I can’t spend my life playing like many of our friends, who have less money but who seem to spend their whole lives traveling or going to restaurants. I’ve tried to be like that, but I can’t. Thanks to my husband’s influence, I got the job I have now. I work, I fill my time, I feel useful and able to justify my existence. One day, my children will be proud of their mother, and my childhood friends will be more frustrated than ever, because I have managed to build something tangible while they have devoted themselves to looking after the house, the children, and their husband.

Perhaps they don’t have this need to impress other people. I do, and I can’t reject it, because it’s been a good influence on my life, driving me on. As long as I don’t take any unnecessary
risks, of course. As long as I manage to preserve my world exactly as it is today.