Invisible Love (22 page)

The weeks that followed the operation almost put an end to their marriage.

The reproaches came thick and fast, constant, sharp, and aggressive, addressed more to themselves than to each other. She blamed herself for being the carrier of the gene and urged him to leave her, while he complained of having held back her desire to be a mother for too long and encouraged her to regain her independence. They each considered themselves unhappy and misunderstood. The grief that should have brought them together isolated them from one another. Since they never spoke of the child they had turned into a ghost, Séverine felt that Benjamin downplayed her pain as a woman and Benjamin was sorry that Séverine ignored his grief as a man. Discreetly, they began cheating on each other. They did it often but sadly, without any real appetite or taste for it, and with a kind of desperate determination that drove them to sleep with strangers the way one might throws oneself into a river: “If the current carries me away, fine; if not, I'll swim to the bank.”

Then they found a therapy that saved their marriage.

Séverine and Benjamin began again to live with all the carefree abandon of their first years together. They traveled, doted on their friends, and practiced their favorite sports. They couldn't be parents, so they became lovers again, and above all partners.

“My marriage is my child,” Séverine would say, a smile on her lips, whenever her acquaintances commented in amazement on the understanding between them.

Since it had turned out there was no way for them to have children, their duo became an end in itself.

In the course of a day, they would smile at each other a thousand times, as if they had just met. After twenty years of living together, Benjamin bought as many roses as a young lover, while Séverine would run to the shops to buy clothes to surprise and seduce her man. They put such energy, refinement, and inventiveness into their lovemaking that sex remained an exciting adventure.

“My marriage is my child.” Their relationship had become a collaboration, the object of constant attention, kept alive by their ingenuity.

They would have maintained this defiant attitude until the day they died, inventing a new version of Tristan and Isolde that would last for all eternity, if that accident had not happened in Chamonix . . .

 

*

 

Could they ever have imagined that the Alps would become their tomb? For these two winter sports fanatics, the mountains had always been a source of deep pleasure, giving them dazzling light, intoxicating speed, and the euphoria of achievement. Where some people relieved their childhood memories beside the sea, Séverine and Benjamin rediscovered their youth whenever they came to a mountain pass. Walking, climbing, skiing—they didn't care how they got across the mountains, every way was a delight. Until they made one expedition too many . . .

Very early that morning, they caught the cable car to the top of the Aiguille du Midi.

Both being highly skilled skiers, they decided to leave the well-marked
pistes
, which were as crowded as the streets of Paris, in order to enjoy the mountains in solitude.

The Alps stretched before them, both smooth and jagged, peaks and ridges alternating with plateaus and belvederes.

What a privilege! The snow was immaculate, untouched. Everything around them was pure, including the silence. They had the impression that they had been reborn beneath that cloudless sky, in that clean, healthy air, burned by the harsh sun.

Far from the dark valley below, the summits offered up their spotless surfaces.

Séverine and Benjamin glided along, weaving as lightly and smoothly as if they were swimming. The atmosphere was becoming liquid, granting them the intoxication of moving gracefully, freely, harmoniously, filled with a joy as fierce as the rays of the sun.

They sped across the heavy but diaphanous snow. Here and there, the white ground glittered like diamonds.

Suddenly Benjamin, who was in front, let out a cry. Séverine had just enough time to bend, then she, too, screamed.

The ground gave way beneath them, they hung in the air for a fraction of a second, then fell for what seemed an interminable time, grazing themselves on the sides, unable to grab on to anything.

At last they crashed onto an icy floor.

A few moments later, dazed, wild-eyed, devoid of their sticks and their skis, which had scattered during the fall, they came to their senses and realized they had fallen into a crevasse.

Another kind of peace reigned here, muffled and disturbing. All birdsong had ceased. Not a noise, not a sound. All life seemed extinguished.

“Are you in one piece, Séverine?”

“Yes, I think so. How about you?”

“I think I am, too.”

Knowing that they were not injured was no real comfort. The problem remained: How to get out?

How far were they from the surface? At least forty or fifty feet . . . Impossible to get back up without help.

They shouted.

In turn, they looked up at the narrow slit of sky above them and yelled. Salvation could come only from that line, beyond the fatal walls that had swallowed them.

Their mouths were burning, thirst laid waste to their throats, their limbs grew rigid. Since their fall, a damp cold had penetrated their layers of clothing, sliding down their necks, insinuating itself between their sleeves and their gloves, turning their socks stiff, and flooding their shoes.

At regular intervals, they shouted.

During these calls for help, the noise they emitted gave them energy, and they urged themselves on to produce an infernal racket, each covering the other's voice.

All to no avail . . .

Nobody heard them.

And for good reason . . . they had ventured so far from the
pistes
, across the pearly, powdery snow, that they had distanced themselves from any well-frequented path. To hear their screams, some reckless soul would have to chance by, and that was extremely unlikely.

After a few hours, exhausted, they no longer had the desire to yell: they hated the roller coaster of emotions it created in them, the way their hopes were shattered every time by the lack of response . . .

They looked at each other, their jaws trembling, their skin puffed and raw.

“We're going to die,” Séverine murmured.

Benjamin nodded sadly. It was pointless hiding the truth from each other.

Séverine lowered her eyes and let the hot tears run down over her cheeks. Benjamin took hold of Séverine's gloved hands and forced her to look at him.

“Séverine, you are the love of my life. I was lucky to meet you, to get to know you, and to be loved by you. Those are the only good memories I will take away with me from my time on earth.”

She looked back at him, her eyes wide, and said in a numb voice, “I don't have any other good memories to take away with me either.”

Tearing himself away from the ice, Benjamin came closer to her. She collapsed in his arms. They kissed fiercely.

Then they broke free and, with renewed vigor, started yelling again. They shouted themselves hoarse. They had no illusions, but they had to play their roles to the end. It was a duty.

The tomb of snow and ice that had walled them up remained silent. The only thing that changed was the light. It was turning gray as color drained from the sky. It would soon be dark . . .

They shivered at the thought of the night they would have to endure.

“Hello? Hello? Is there someone down there?”

They gave a start.

A head had appeared above them, in the slit: a young girl with a thin, energetic face. Their hearts went wild, and they screamed.

“I'll go for help,” she cried in a clear voice.

“You won't have time to go down to the valley and come up again. It'll be night soon. Send us down a rope.”

“I'm skiing, I don't have a rope.”

Séverine and Benjamin looked at each other in dismay. Their hope had just been dashed.

Up above, the face vanished.

Benjamin jumped and hit the wall. “Don't go! Please stay!” he screamed, almost demented with panic. Unable to move, Séverine stared at him without reacting.

Then the silence fell again, sharp, dense, oppressive. Neither dared ask what the other was thinking. They were shivering with cold.

Time slipped away. One minute. Ten minutes. Half an hour. An hour. She wasn't coming back.

“Catch!” the girl called to them from up above, and began threading an orange rope through the slit. Cleverly, she had gone to the nearest
piste
and grabbed the rope joining the posts that lined the sides. Now she had tied it firmly to a rock and was lowering it toward the trapped couple.

Séverine grabbed hold of it first, summoned her last remaining strength and, ten minutes later, extricated herself from the hole. Then, in turn, Benjamin performed the same maneuver.

Back on the surface, sitting on the snow, suffering from chills and bruises, they peered through the fading light at their liberator: Mélissa, twenty years old. She was roaring with laughter. For her, this rescue had been a tremendous adventure.

 

*

 

At the chalet, Séverine and Benjamin warmed themselves, tended to their wounds, consulted a doctor, coated themselves with the prescribed ointments, gulped down painkillers and anti-inflammatories, then telephoned Mélissa. They did not want to leave without thanking her again.

Without any self-consciousness, she invited them to a party she was throwing with some friends.

Séverine and Benjamin celebrated their return to life surrounded by some fifteen lively young people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two. They had all known each other since childhood, and often spent their vacations together.

Warmed by the wine, the jokes, and the jovial atmosphere in the restaurant, Séverine and Benjamin gazed lovingly at their benefactress. Dancing wildly to a rock number, Mélissa seemed to them to possess all the qualities wrapped up in one person: strength, intelligence, vivacity, kindness, energy.

One of the young men, seeing them looking at her, sat down next to them. “Mélissa's great, isn't she?”

“Oh, yes!” Séverine exclaimed.

“She really is,” the young man murmured. “And to think she's seriously ill . . . Nobody would ever guess it.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Yes. Mélissa has cystic fibrosis. Didn't you know?”

Séverine and Benjamin turned white. Silent, mouths open, hands shaking, they sat pinned to their seats, their eyes riveted on Mélissa. They had just seen a ghost.

 

 

 

AUTHOR'S NOTE

 

 

Having gotten into the habit, in the second editions of my books, of adding a writer's diary, I have discovered that readers like it, so now I sometimes add these pages to the first edition. These are passages from my diary concerning my work in progress.
 

 

 

 

A
friend of mine, one of the best theatrical makeup artists around, who lives with a psychiatrist, tells me how they became partners. Several decades ago, the two men got married in the darkness at the back of a church, hidden by pillars, while up at the altar, flooded with light, a wedding ceremony was taking place.

I find the anecdote a touching one. Humor is so rare in love, and so is humility! Personally, I think of these unpretentious lovers who wanted to be united before God as being very Christian.

Their act shows the strength of a passion that ignores taboos, defies appearances, and obtains what it is not entitled to.

This “pretend” marriage has lasted for more than thirty years . . .

“What about the ‘proper' marriage?” I ask my friend. “How did that work out?”

He doesn't know.

I can't help but ponder. Did the couple that officially swore “to have and to hold” keep their vows? Has the legitimate love, encouraged by society, lasted as long as the illegitimate one?

 

*

 

I think again about my friends, the clandestine couple. Maybe it's because society has marginalized them that they've been able to give new meaning to the vows they swore in an echo of the official couple.

Their fidelity doesn't involve castrating or shackling each other. It is positive, committed to always giving the other person what you have promised—love, help, care and support—but not restrictive. For these two friends, who have allowed each other to have affairs, you don't have to lock your partner up in a cage in order to be a couple.

I seem to be back with Diderot, the hero of my play
The Libertine
. However, I am absolutely convinced that this liberal fidelity is easier to realize in same-sex couples because, in order to understand the other person you only have to examine yourself, whereas between a man and a woman there is a need to come to grips with the unknown.

Whereas infidelity is a tragedy in a male-female couple, one that may end in a breakup, an all-male couple is less worried about the impulses that lead to fleeting affairs. Whether or not they give in to those impulses, they acknowledge them, because they instinctively know what male sexuality is. What gives such a relationship an insolent ease is that the other person is the same as you, whereas between a man and a woman the other person remains another person. Sincerity and clearheadedness are not enough, it takes a long apprenticeship, not only to understand the opposite sex, but to actually get along with it.

 

*

 

During a train journey from Paris to Brussels, I scribbled a story called “Two Gentlemen from Brussels” in my notebook. At the Gare du Nord in Paris it was still very vague. By the time I got to the Gare du Midi in Brussels, an hour and twenty minutes later, this vague thing, like molten metal turning into a solid object, had taken on the shape and density of a story with a beginning, a middle and an end, characters and various episodes that had grown organically. Will I ever be able to repay my debt to the railroad companies? So many of my books have been conceived and hatched while I was being shaken about in a train . . .