Invisible Love (4 page)

Within a few months, he managed to find out that the Spaniard wasn't a Spaniard, he was Italian, his name was Giuseppe, and he, too, was married, which explained his secretiveness.

Although nobody was aware of the affair between Geneviève and Giuseppe, anyone seeing Geneviève cross the street with her baby carriage, full of beauty and energy and self-confidence, could sense that this woman was blossoming, physically and emotionally.

At last, Angela announced that in one of the quarrels she overheard through the wall Geneviève had asked for a divorce.

“He's refusing, of course. Without her, that good-for-nothing will be penniless. But she's giving as good as she gets, is our Geneviève. I can hardly recognize her.”

“Tell me, Angela, do you think she has a lover?”

“
Scherza
! When you're lumbered with
un pezzo
like that,
sarebbe giudizioso
to take a lover, but not her!
Santa madonna
. . .”

As soon as Angela left the store, Jean turned to Laurent and said in a voice trembling with emotion, “Our little Geneviève's a fighter.”

“Yes. I'm proud of her.”

“Is she going to make it?”

“If you saw her with her David in her arms,” Laurent cried, “you'd know she will.”

Jean and Laurent discussed Geneviève, Eddy, Giuseppe, David, Minnie, Johnny, and Claudia as if they were talking about their own family. Without their realizing it, the story of that other couple had become part of their life. It was as if they were close friends.

It never even crossed their minds that if anyone had mentioned their two names—Jean Daemens and Laurent Delphin—to the Greniers, the latter would not have known who they were talking about.

Angela's next piece of gossip was that her neighbor was going to move house. Even though her husband was refusing a divorce, she was going to present him with a fait accompli and move out with her four children. Jean did his best to conceal his joy, but then took advantage of Angela going out to run an errand and called Laurent at the theater to tell him the news.

That evening, they went to L'Écailler du Roi on Place des Sablons to celebrate. There, surrounded by blue decor that resembled the sea, they drank copious amounts of champagne. What factory worker or cleaning woman living in the damp buildings of the Marolles would have imagined that above their heads, in the upper town, two men were sitting in one of the most expensive restaurants in the city and celebrating the emancipation of one of their neighbors?

They spent the following Monday trying to figure out a way to help Geneviève move out while remaining anonymous and not arousing any suspicion. They had thought up a number of plausible scenarios by the time Angela said to Jean in the shop on Tuesday, “You know what happened,
Signor
Daemens? Eddy Grenier had a stroke! Just like that!”

“Is he dead?”

“No. They rushed him to emergency. Now he's in intensive care. I hope God sends
questo diavolo
straight to hell.”

“That's not very Catholic of you, Angela.”

“Eddy won't be any more
caldo
in the ass down there than he is up here: he's always kept it close to the oven.
Almeno
, he'll pay for his cheating.
Sì, lo so
, it's not a very Christian thing to say, but
questo mostro
has never been very Christian either, so . . .”

Given that he shared her opinion, Jean was perfectly prepared to grant her absolution.

For a few hours, Jean and Laurent fervently hoped that Eddy would die. They did not feel bad in any way about thinking this. Their one fear was that the incident would set back Geneviève's happiness.

Angela kept Jean up to date with the situation. At first, Eddy's condition was stable. Then she reported “a slight improvement.” Finally, she announced triumphantly that Eddy had been moved out of intensive care and into the regular cardiac ward. Over the days, without even realizing it, Angela had forgotten her curse on Eddy and had started seeing his illness through her neighbor's eyes, delighting in tiny improvements, desiring a speedy recovery. So carried away was she by her good heart, it would not have been a surprise if she had taken flowers to this man she detested.

A few weeks later, as she swept the floor, Angela said, “Did I ever tell you about my neighbor, Monsieur Daemens, a nice woman named Geneviève Grenier?”

Jean pricked up his ears. “The one who's supposed to be leaving her husband?” he said casually.

“
Ecco
! Only now she isn't.”

“What?”

“He's coming home from hospital today. He's going to need physical therapy.”

“There are institutions for that.”

“That's what I said,
Signor
Daemens!
Parola per parola
it's what I told her! And you know what she replied? That he's still the father of her children, that she'd never forgive herself if she abandoned him
in questo stato
, that she's given up her other plans. I didn't quite understand what she
suggerisce
by these ‘other plans' because, apart from moving,
non ha menzionato
that she was changing jobs . . . Actually, I promised I'd go help her at the hospital. That's at five o'clock! Do you mind if
tolgo
a few minutes? I'll make it up tomorrow.”

“Better still, Angela, I'll drop you there, I have a delivery to make.”

“
Fantastico
!”

At five o'clock, Jean drove Angela to the Saint-Pierre Hos­pital, waited until she had entered the lobby, then went and parked his car a short distance away and took up his position in a café on Rue Haute.

Half an hour later, Angela reappeared, carrying a couple of cardboard suitcases. Behind her came Geneviève, pushing a wheelchair in which Eddy sat slumped, pale-faced and dribbling, moving at the slightest jolt like a bag of meat. The whole of his right side was paralyzed.

Above that lifeless face, Geneviève's face seemed just as expressionless, her complexion waxy, her lips pale, her absent gaze fixed straight ahead.

Jean wanted to leap out and scream, “Leave him, he's ruined your life and he's going to keep ruining it. Go back to Giuseppe right now!”

But from the care she took in maneuvering the wheelchair, avoiding the bumps in the road, making sure that the blanket was protecting the patient from the cold, Jean realized that Geneviève would never go back on her decision. She was sacrificing her happiness, allowing herself to be walled alive in a tomb. With suicidal generosity, she had placed her pity for Eddy over her love for Giuseppe.

She passed a few yards from Jean, and, seeing her gently moving that wreck that had once been Eddy through the streets of the Marolles, his anger was replaced by admiration. What dignity! “For better or worse,” the priest had said beneath the shimmering stained-glass windows of Sainte-Gudule. That was what she had committed herself to, and she was keeping her word. The “better” had been brief. The “worse” had already lasted a long time, and looked set to last much longer. Jean felt pitiful in comparison. Would he be capable of such self-denial?

Shaken, he got back in his car and for a long time drove aimlessly through the tunnels that surrounded the city, lost in thought.

When Laurent heard about Geneviève's change of mind, he was just as upset. How could you put anything before happiness? He too would never have imagined . . . Although they both disapproved of Geneviève, she was forcing them to look at things differently.

That evening, Laurent asked Jean, “Would you still love me if I became disabled?”

“I don't know. You've never brought me anything but joy. What about you?”

“The same.”

They pondered this. Then Laurent said, “Basically, there's no merit in our loving each other . . .”

Jean nodded.

They looked at each other, both stirred by a mixture of emotions. Should they put each other to the test to measure the extent of their love? That was absurd. They broke off this conversation and went out to see a movie.

 

*

 

The months that followed confirmed the magnitude of Geneviève's sacrifice.

Since Laurent had gotten into the habit of joining his colleagues in the bars of the Marolles, he often saw Giuseppe, who was looking increasingly sullen and demoralized.

“According to the owner of the Perroquet,” he said one day to Jean, “Giuseppe's planning to go back to Italy soon. He says the reason he's so glum is that he's homesick.”

“What a mess. And what about David? Does this mean he'll never know his real father?”

“That's the fate of illegitimate children. The mother decides.”

The grim turn that events had taken—chronicle of a disaster foretold—lessened their interest in the Grenier family.

Almost in spite of themselves, they turned their attention away from them, made new friends, traveled more.

They were probably afraid . . . Which of us, coming into contact with misfortune, hasn't feared infection?

Then, when we realize that misfortune can't be spread like a virus, it is no longer misfortune that we fear, but our own reaction to it. The inertia that keeps us in painful situations opens the door to the negative forces within us, the forces that lead us to the precipice and make us lean over to look down at the seething crater, to move closer to its lava, to smell its hot, fatal breath . . .

It was their instinct for life that made Jean and Laurent distance themselves from the Greniers.

 

*

 

Several years passed.

Jean and Laurent were approaching their fifties, a difficult time for men. It is now that the countdown starts: the future is no longer infinite, it is simply the time they have left. They stop wanting to go faster, their one desire becomes to slow down.

Jean and Laurent would have been astonished if anyone had reminded them that, just ten years earlier, they had talked about Geneviève every day.

Although they still loved each other, their love was less of a miracle now, more of a habit. Each man wondered what his life would have been like if he had made a different choice, if he hadn't selected this particular companion, preferring him over everyone else . . . Naturally, these dizzying questions remained unanswered, but they still cast a shadow over their daily lives.

Jean had stopped listening to Angela's gossip, especially as she had moved from Rue des Renards and had new neighbors.

One day, as he was arranging some items in the window, he had what he thought at first was a vision. On the other side of the glass, a woman with a familiar face was pointing out a lapis lazuli bracelet to a good-looking ten-year-old boy. Jean was so surprised to see Geneviève again, looking impish and bright-eyed in the full bloom of motherhood, and so delighted to see how handsome her son was, that at first he was not sure who to look at, the mother or the child.

David and Geneviève had been strolling in the gallery and had stopped to look at the jewelry on display in the window, unaware that Jean was watching them from inside the shop.

David's good looks overwhelmed him.

The two window shoppers went on their way. Jean should have gone out, caught up with them, and asked them to come in and have a look at the items that interested them, maybe try them on . . . But he stood there petrified, unable to react. It was as if the shop window had become an uncrossable border, a wall between past and present.

At dinner, when he told Laurent what had happened, his lover teased him gently. “Is this David really so good-looking?”

“Yes, he really is.”

The next day, Laurent asked again, “Is David good-looking?”

Jean again said yes, and did his best to describe him.

And the next day, Laurent returned to the same question. “Very good-looking? How exactly?”

Laurent was now questioning him several times an hour . . .

Jean sensed that he wasn't supplying the expected answer. “Do you want to see him?” he suggested. “Why don't we go and wait for him outside his building?”

Laurent almost jumped for joy.

By half past four, they were sitting in their car, which they had parked in the Marolles, on Rue Haute, just above the narrow street where Geneviève lived.

Suddenly the boy appeared and Jean pointed to him.

He had a school satchel on his back, and was not so much walking as dancing along the street, his body as light as his mood.

Laurent leaned forward to get a better look at the boy. Eyes wide open, holding his breath, he turned red as he gazed at him.

Sensing the depth of his friend's emotion, Jean turned to him, and was astounded to see that the veins stood out on his neck.

Smiling, the boy crossed the street, turned onto Rue des Renards, and walked—or rather, jumped—into his building.

Laurent caught his breath. “I'm sure that if you'd had a son, he would have looked like David.”

It was at that moment that Jean realized how deep was Laurent's love for him.

They sat there for a long time, their fingers intertwined, resting the backs of their necks against the headrests, their eyes misting over. The emotion they felt was a mixture: partly the strength of their affection for one another, but also the frustration, the intense, deep-seated regret that they had not had children.

“Do you really miss it?” Jean asked.

“A child?”

“Yes. What I miss is a little you, a miniature you, a pocket Jean who would need me, who I could cherish unreservedly, without taking anything away from you. I have a lot of love to give, you know, I have plenty more where this came from.” Laurent smiled, relieved at having expressed what he was feeling. “What about you?”

Jean did not reply. He had never put these dreams and disappointments into words, let alone words like those. He kicked the ball into touch. “Are you really so sentimental, my dear Laurent?”