Delicacy (2 page)

“I’ll have a juice …”

“… ?”

“Apricot juice, I guess.”

He looked at her as if she were a violation of reality.

Her reason for agreeing to sit down with a stranger was that she’d fallen under his charm. She’d immediately liked his mixture of awkwardness and obviousness, an attitude floundering between Pierre Richard and Marlon Brando. Physically, he had something she appreciated in men: he was a little cross-eyed. Just a little, but still enough to notice. Yes, finding this detail about him was incredible. What’s more, he was called François. She’d always liked that name. Elegant and calm—like her idea of the fifties. He spoke more and more effortlessly now. No more lapses in the conversation, no more embarrassment, tension. Ten minutes later, that first incursion in the street had been forgotten. They felt like they’d already met, were seeing each other because they had a date. The simplicity of it was disconcerting: a simplicity that made all the other dates they’d had before baffling, those times they’d had to talk or try to be amusing, make an effort to seem like a worthwhile person. The obviousness of it became almost laughable. Natalie gazed at this no-longer-strange boy while each particle of anonymity progressively
dissolved right before her eyes. She tried to remember where she’d been going when she met him. It was a blur. She wasn’t the type to go walking for no reason. Hadn’t she wanted to walk in the traces of that Cortázar novel she’d just read? Now, between them, there was literature. Yes, that was it, she’d read
Hopscotch
and had particularly liked those scenes where hero and heroine try to run into each other in the street, although they’re following
routes born of a clochard phrase
.
^b
In the evening, they reconstructed their itineraries on a map, to see at what moment they could have met, at what moments they were bound to have brushed by each other. So that’s where she was headed: into a novel.

Three

Natalie’s Three Favorite Novels

Her Lover
by Albert Cohen

*

The Lover
by Marguerite Duras

*

Separation
by Dan Franck

Four

François worked in finance. Five minutes with him was enough to reveal this to be as incongruous as Natalie’s career in marketing. Maybe there’s a tyranny of the concrete that permanently frustrates careers. That said, it’s difficult to imagine what else he could have done. We may have experienced him as almost timid when he was meeting Natalie, but this was a man who was full of vitality, bursting with ideas and energy. He was enthusiastic enough to tackle any profession—even sales rep with tie. He was a man you’d have no trouble imagining with a briefcase, squeezing hands while hoping to squeeze necks. He had that annoying charm of somebody who can sell you anything at all. You’d go skiing with him in the summer and swimming with him in a lake in Iceland. He was the kind of man who’d approach a woman in the street just once and end up with the right one. For him, everything seemed to work. So, finance—why not? He belonged to that group of novice traders who gambled with millions and remembered not so long ago Monopoly games. But as soon as he was away from his bank, he became another man. He left the Standard & Poor’s where it belonged. His profession hadn’t kept him from his enthusiasms. Most of all, he liked puzzles.
That may seem strange, but nothing channeled his intensity more than spending certain Saturdays putting together thousands of pieces. Natalie enjoyed watching her fiancé crouched in the living room. A silent spectacle. Suddenly, he’d stand up and shout, “Come on, we’re going out!” That’s the last thing that should be pointed out about him. He was no fan of transitions. He liked disruptions, passing from silence to bursts of activity.

With François, time flew—at a frenzied pace. You’d have believed he could skip days, create strange weeks that had no Thursday. They’d barely met and were already celebrating two years together. Two years without the slightest blemish, enough to baffle any plate-smasher. You watched them the way you’d admire a champion. They were gold medalists of love. Natalie brilliantly pursued her studies, all the while adding ease to François’s daily life. Choosing a man who was just a little bit older than she and who already had a professional position had allowed her to leave her family. But not wanting to depend upon him for financial survival, she’d decided to work a few evenings a week in the theater as an usherette. She enjoyed a job that offset the rather austere atmosphere of the university. Once the audience had been seated, she went to her place at the back. She’d sit down and watch a show she knew by heart. She moved her lips in sync with the actresses and smiled with gracious appreciation while the audience was applauding. Then she sold them the program.

Knowing the plays perfectly, she enjoyed embellishing her daily portion of dialogues, striding up and down the living room
while yowling that the cat was dead. These last few evenings, she was playing Musset’s
Lorenzaccio
, tossing out a random series of lines now and then with perfect incoherence. “Come here, the Hungarian is right.” Or else: “Who is that in the mud? Who grovels before the walls of my palace with such horrible screams?” This is what François was being treated to that day, while he tried to concentrate. “Can you make a little less noise?” he asked.

“Yes, sure.”

“I’m doing a really major puzzle.”

So Natalie quieted down, out of respect for her boyfriend’s dedication. This puzzle seemed different from the others. You couldn’t see any patterns, any castles or characters. It was composed of red loops on a white background. Loops that were turning into letters. It was a message in the form of a puzzle. Natalie let go of the book she’d just opened to watch the puzzle taking shape. Occasionally François turned around to look at her. The process of discovery continued toward its conclusion. There were only a few pieces left; Natalie could already guess the message, a painstakingly created one, made of hundreds of pieces. Yes, now she could read what it said: “Do you want to become my wife?”

Five

Top Scorers of the World of Puzzles Championship
in Minsk, October 27 to November 1, 2008

1. Ulrich Voigt (Germany): 1,464 points

2. Mehmet Murat Sevim (Turkey): 1,266 points

3. Roger Barkan (United States): 1,241 points

Six

To keep such an impeccable routine from being thwarted, the wedding was wonderfully executed. A celebration that was simple and sweet, neither gaudy nor too serious. There was a bottle of champagne for every guest; that was practical. The good humor was genuine. You have to be merry for a wedding. Much more so than for a birthday. There’s a hierarchy of responsibilities for joyousness, and marriage sits at the top of the pyramid. You should smile and dance and, later, pressure the old people to go to bed. Let us not forget the beauty of Natalie, who’d worked on her appearance with mounting application, tending to her weight and her looks for weeks. A perfectly mastered work of preparation: she was at the height of her beauty. Such a singular moment had to be fixed in time, just as Armstrong had planted the American flag on the moon. François studied her with emotion and fixed the moment in his memory better than anyone else. Before him stood his wife, and he knew this image was the one that would pass before his eyes at his moment of death. It came down to perfect happiness. Then she stood up, took hold of the microphone, and sang a Beatles song.
^c
François
was crazy for John Lennon. He was, in fact, wearing white to pay homage to him. And so, when the newlyweds danced, the whiteness of one was lost in the whiteness of the other.

Unfortunately, it began raining. This prevented the guests from taking a little air outside, under the heavens, and contemplating the stars that had been rented for the occasion. In such cases, people love to come up with ridiculous sayings, such as, “Rainy wedding, happy marriage.” Why are we constantly subjected to such absurd utterances? Of course, they weren’t being serious. It was raining and just a bit sad, that’s all. The party was less lavish cut off from these breathing sessions in the open air. You’d get stifled fast watching the rain fall harder and harder. Some would leave sooner than planned. Others would keep dancing in the same way they would have if it had snowed. Still others would think twice. Was this really important for the wedding couple?

Comes that hour of happiness when you’re alone in the crowd. Yes, they were alone in the whirl of melodies and waltzes. We have to twirl as long as possible, he was saying, twirl to the point of no longer knowing where to go. She stopped thinking of everything. For the first time, life was lived in its unique, all-embracing density: the present.

François took Natalie by the waist and led her outside. They ran through the garden. She said to him, “You’re crazy,” but it was a craziness that made her mad with joy. Now they were drenched, hidden by the trees. In the night, under the rain, they lay on bare ground, which was becoming muddy. The whiteness of their clothing was only a memory. François took off his wife’s
dress, accepting that it was what he’d wanted to do since the start of the evening. He could even have done it at church. An instant way of honoring the two “I do’s.” But he’d held back his desire until this moment. Natalie was surprised by his intensity. She’d already stopped thinking a moment ago. She took cues from her husband, trying to breathe correctly, trying not to get carried away by all this ravaging. Her desire obeyed François’s. She had such longing to be taken by him now, on their first night as husband and wife. She was waiting, waiting, and François was talking his head off, François was in the throes of an insane energy, an outrageous appetite for pleasure. Except that, just as he penetrated her, he felt paralyzed. An anxiety that may have been related to fear of joy too intense; but no, it was something else, another thing holding him back at that instant. And keeping him from going on. “What’s happening?” she asked him. And he answered, “Nothing … nothing … it’s just the first time I’ve made love with a married woman.”