Delicacy (9 page)

Natalie felt ridiculous being here and having this kind of discussion with so young a woman. Moreover, as usual, she wasn’t able to live in the moment. Maybe that’s what grief is: a permanent disconnect from the here and now. She looked at the games adults played and felt detached. It was easy to tell herself: “I’m not here.” Chloé was speaking to her with the rash energy of the here and now, trying to keep her there and push her into thinking, “I am here.” She kept talking about that man. And quite rightly, since he was finishing his beer and looking like he was trying to decide whether to approach them. But passing from a glance to a conversation, from the eye to the word, is never simple. After a long day of work, he was in that leisurely mood that sometimes pushes you into bold behavior. Under every daring move, fatigue often hides. He was still looking at Natalie. What did he really have to lose? Nothing, except perhaps a little of the appeal he had from being unknown.

He paid for his drink and left his observation post. His walk could almost have been called resolute. Natalie was several feet away from him: ten, twelve, not more. It dawned on her that this
man was coming over to see her. Immediately a strange thought popped into her head: in seven years this man coming toward me may die by being run over. That flash of an idea shook her up inescapably and emphasized her fragility. Every man who approached her ineluctably reminded her of meeting François. However, this one had nothing in common with her husband. He was coming at her with his bedroom smile, his smile from an easy world. But once he got to the table, he was mute. A moment left hanging. He’d made up his mind to come up to them but hadn’t prepared the slightest conversation starter. Maybe he was just worried? Surprised, the girls took stock of the man, who stuck there like an exclamation point.

“Hello … can I offer you a drink?” he finally let out uninspiredly.

Chloé accepted, and he sat down near them with his feeling of being halfway to the prize. Once he’d sat down, Natalie thought, He’s stupid. He offers me a drink when mine has hardly been touched. Then, suddenly, she changed her mind. She told herself that his hesitation at the moment of approaching them was touching. Then once more aggression took the fore. Incessantly shifting, contradictory moods gripped her. She simply did not know what to think. Each of her gestures was quashed by an impulse against it.

Chloé took charge of the conversation, piling on positive stories about Natalie, building her up. To hear her, this was a modern, brilliant, amusing, cultivated, dynamic, scrupulous, generous, uncompromising woman. All of it in under five minutes, so complete that the man only had one question in mind: what
was the hitch? During each of Chloé’s lyric transports, Natalie had tried to emit believable smiles, to relax the planes of her face, and in rare flashes, she seemed natural. But the energy had drained her. Why put on a face? Why use all her strength to seem affable and agreeable? And then, what would come next? Another date? The need to be more and more candid? Suddenly, everything that was simple and easy was cast in a dark light. Underneath a harmless conversation, she could detect the monstrous mechanism of the life of the couple.

She excused herself and got up to go to the ladies’ room. For a long moment, she examined herself in the mirror. Every detail of her face. She splashed a little water on her cheeks. Did she think she was beautiful? Did she have an opinion about herself? About her femininity? It was time to go back. But she stayed there for several minutes without moving, thinking, afloat in her reflections. When she got back to her table, she grabbed her coat. She made an excuse, without taking the trouble to make it seem believable. Chloé said something that she didn’t hear. She was already outside. A little later, as he was going to bed, the man wondered if he’d made a fool of himself.

Thirty-three

Astrological Signs of the People on Natalie’s Team

Chloé: Libra

*

Jean-Pierre: Pisces

*

Albert: Taurus

*

Markus: Scorpio

*

Marie: Virgo

*

Benoît: Capricorn

Thirty-four

The next morning, she apologized to Chloé without going into detail. At the office, she was Chloé’s boss. She was a strong woman. She simply explained that, for the time being, she didn’t feel able to go out. “It’s too bad,” murmured her young colleague. That was all. They had to pass on to something else. After that exchange, Natalie stayed in the hallway for a moment. Then she went back to her office. All the files finally appeared to her under their real light: holding absolutely no interest.

She had never completely withdrawn from the world of the senses. She had never really stopped being a woman, even during moments when she wanted to die. Maybe it was homage to François, or merely came from the idea that sometimes it’s enough to put on makeup to seem alive. He’d been dead for three years. Three years of frittering away a life lived in emptiness. They’d often suggested that she leave her memories behind. Maybe it was the best way to stop living in the past. She remembered the expression:
leaving your memories behind
. How do you give up a memory? She’d accepted the idea when it came to objects. She couldn’t tolerate having those he’d touched
around her anymore. As a result, there wasn’t much left, except for a photo she’d put away in the big drawer of her desk. A photo that seemed lost. She looked at it often, as if she were persuading herself that their story had really existed. In the drawer, there was also a small mirror. She took it out to take a look at herself the way a man would if he were seeing her for the very first time. She got up, began walking back and forth in her office, her hands on her hips. Because of the carpeting, her spike heels made no noise. Carpeting can murder sensuality. Who could have possibly invented the wall-to-wall carpet?

Thirty-five

Someone knocked. Discreetly, with two knuckles, not more. Natalie gave a start as if those last few seconds had made her believe she could be alone in the world. She said, “Come in,” and Markus entered. He was a fellow employee from Uppsala, a Swedish city that doesn’t interest many people. Even the inhabitants of Uppsala
^f
themselves are embarrassed; the name of their city sounds almost like an excuse. Sweden has the highest suicide rate in the world. One alternative to suicide is emigrating to France, something Markus must have thought of. Physically, he was rather unpleasant, which is not to say that he was ugly. His way of dressing was always a bit odd: you couldn’t tell if he’d salvaged his clothes from his grandfather, at an Emmaus shop, or at a hip secondhand store. All of it formed an ensemble that wasn’t very coordinated.

“I came to see you about file 114,” he said.

His appearance was weird enough; did he also have to come out with statements as foolish as that? Natalie had no desire to
work today. It was the first time in a long stretch. She was feeling something resembling despair; would have almost been ready to go on vacation in Uppsala, in other words. She was staring at Markus, who wasn’t moving. He was looking at her in amazement. For him, she represented a certain kind of inaccessible woman, doubled by the fantasy that some people develop toward all superiors, or anyone in a position to hold sway over them. So she decided to walk toward him, slowly, very slowly. You’d almost have had the time to read a novel while she made her approach. She seemed not to want to stop, so much so that she found herself nose to nose with Markus, so close that their noses really did touch. The Swede had stopped breathing. What did she want? He didn’t have the time to formulate that question in his mind at greater length, because she’d begun to kiss him for all she was worth. It was a long, intense kiss, the intensely adolescent kind. Then suddenly she pulled away.

“We’ll see about file 114 later.”

She opened the door and suggested Markus leave. Which he did with difficulty. He was Armstrong on the moon. That kiss was one giant leap for mankind—for him. He stayed there at the door to her office for a moment, without moving. Natalie herself had already completely forgotten what had just happened. What she’d just done had no connection to the series of other actions in her life. This kiss was the expression of a sudden insurrection among her neurons, what could be called a gratuitous act.

Thirty-six

The Invention of the Wall-to-Wall Carpet

It appears difficult to discover who invented the wall-to-wall carpet. According to the Larousse dictionary, the carpet is merely “a rug sold by the yard.”

Here we have an expression that offers undeniable proof of the pathetic nature of the wall-to-wall carpet, which has no relationship to
calling somebody on the carpet
.

Thirty-seven