The 6:41 to Paris (6 page)

I felt just the same—nothing had changed—when I got off the train in Troyes. Then suddenly there was Mathieu Coché. The guy’s best friend. It was too much. But at the same time I knew I had no reason to blame Mathieu. Besides,
he was being considerate. He asked me, awkwardly, had it not gone well. I just said, “You don’t want to know,” and he nodded. He let a few minutes go by. The waiters were bustling around us. With their black and gold striped waistcoats, they looked like wasps.

I saw wasps. All around me. Their mandibles slicing up pieces of my flesh with a precise cruelty. My arms. My cheeks. My tongue. My eyes.

I had a sudden abrupt reaction, and almost knocked over the table. Mathieu Coché was startled. He touched my hand.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I thought there was an insect.”

“If you want to talk, or have a drink, or simply see someone, you can call me. I’ll be here all summer.”

I didn’t say anything. I just stared at him. What was he thinking, really? Was he trying to hit on me? Was this his
thing, to console the ex-girlfriends of his pal the heartbreaker? Or was it nothing? Simply nothing? Politeness? Kindness in the presence of someone who’s
in pain? I never found out. I never called him, either.

He raised his hand to ask for the check, and the watch he was wearing slipped an inch or so down his arm. That’s when I saw the mole, just above his wrist.

All of a sudden, I emerged
from my hatred.

I caught a glimpse of what was hidden deep inside Mathieu Coché.

His eyes, shoulders, forearms, neck—everything was seeping with absence. With emptiness.

The possibility, suddenly, of another life, with Mathieu Coché, was dizzying. Even today, it still is. Even here, now, on this early-morning train. Even here in these SNCF toilets that could use a good cleaning.

Someone just
tried the handle. Once. Twice.

I don’t know how long I’ve been in here.

I’m out of my mind.

I have to get out of here. And back to my seat. The trip is already half over. It will go quickly now. Everything goes so fast anyway. Everything goes so fast, but twenty-seven years later, it is all still there.

“Excuse me.”

“No problem.”

She brushed past me.

Just the slightest contact, that brushing motion, bringing back impressions, colors, dark green, deep blue, undergrowth. Did I ever go walking in the forest with Cécile? If I did, I don’t remember. And yet there’s a lot I do remember. Some things that I would rather forget. The way I behaved toward her at the end. I would like to tell her that I never did anything like that
ever again. It’s true. Before her, yes. I could be a real lout. A cad. All those words no one uses much anymore.

I was almost back there.

If I closed my eyes, with her legs brushing against mine, I could remember how it was, the two of us. The way we moved together. The way we talked. All that blustering. How we wanted to make fun of everything. To be supremely ironic. Such vanity. What poseurs
we were.

My cell phone vibrating.

Text message from Christine: “We have to talk.” Which just goes to show how useful cell phones are: to send a message to tell the other person that you have to talk. Now, indeed, the time has come to be sarcastic. But sarcasm all on one’s own is pointless. And this woman next to me on the train is not about to speak to me. I wonder if she’s recognized me. I’ll
bet she has, now: but that’s pure vanity. As if I were so unforgettable. And my
looks hadn’t changed a bit. That’s what I used to think. That as you got older your body just got drier—you got wrinkles, more accentuated features, and that was it. Whereas nowadays I look like a balloon. Full of hot air, wedged tight into an uncomfortable SNCF seat.

What am I supposed to say to Christine? What can
I possibly reply? “Whenever you want,” “Yes,” “No,” “Now what,” “I miss you.”

Or something neutral and descriptive. “I’m on the train.” Then, for a bit of spice, provoke her: “With Cécile Duffaut.” But that wouldn’t serve any purpose—Christine doesn’t know Cécile.

And besides, this encounter is purely anecdotal. There are other women I could have run into on the train. Women who have actually
meant something in my life. Virginie, for example. Who I was seeing before Christine. We were together for two years. We had a lot in common. And a lot of differences—it would have been impossible to construct anything on such a swamp, and already back then I wanted something solid, concrete, a protection against erosion. Or Élise. That’s true, there was Élise. Only one month, but a month of breathtaking
intensity. She was about to go to Brazil, she had a round-trip ticket good for a year, but she wasn’t at all sure she would come back, she’d been dreaming about Brazil since she was a kid. One night she said to me, “You could go, too, you could drop everything and come with me.” She smiled as she said it. She knew it was just idle talk. I’m not the type who can do that sort of thing. In
fact, I don’t know anyone in my circle who could just go off like that. On a wild impulse: you only
see that sort of thing in fiction, in bad novels, Sunday evening TV movies. I wonder where Élise is now. I can’t picture her old. There’s a good chance she’s not even old. She could be dead, for all I know. Long dead. That’s what I’m afraid of. You meet someone, you’re together for a while, then
he or she disappears from your everyday life, you get over it, you forget. One day, on a train, you think, “For all I know, they’re dead.” I’m glad to be traveling here silently with Cécile Duffaut: at least I know she’s not dead.

In spite of everything, I’m also glad I’m on my way to see Mathieu. Because the two of us know exactly where we stand. And I’ll never have to say, “Well, for all I
know he’s dead.” At least that.

At least that.

I hate that expression more than anything. My mother uses it all the time. It reassures her about the world around her. Gives it logic, seemliness. But she can take it way too far. When the space shuttle Challenger exploded, out it came: at least their bodies won’t be endlessly orbiting the earth. And once she managed to tear her eyes away from
the screen after the planes had crashed into the twin towers, she murmured, at least they had time to call their wives and husbands to say good-bye.

I’m an At Least son.

At least you passed your exams.

At least you’ve got a steady job.

At least you’ve had children.

At least your ex-wife isn’t making a fuss about the alimony.

At least your divorce hasn’t gone too badly. At least you’re not
dead.

I did almost die, once.

Like everyone, I suppose.

I was sailing on the lake, ten miles or so from my parents’ place. It was not long after Cécile Duffaut. A sudden storm. The wind picked up, formed a tornado. I was fascinated. I’d never seen one in my life. After that I don’t know exactly what happened. Something bashed me in the back of the head, probably the boom jibing. I passed out
and fell overboard. The other sailors didn’t have time to notice me: their boats were in trouble, too. I opened my eyes: algae, bubbles, silt, but the terrifying noise of the storm was gone. It felt good, there. I felt good. I thought, game over, and I think I smiled, but is it possible to smile when you’re running out of air? I remember that my head hurt, and I may well have been bleeding.

I didn’t want to die, but living wasn’t all that great an option, either. My relationships with girls were heading nowhere. My parents and I annoyed each other beyond belief. The years seemed to be frittering away, like the friendships I had thought would always endure. Anything could happen, why not death?

But I rose to the surface. A moment of panic. Air. The need for air. But it was a close
call. I’ve never been out sailing since.

Of course everything would be different now. I have responsibilities. I have my children.

I can still hear that white noise distinctly—not
unlike the crackling of a vinyl record once the music is over. The silence of afterward. Almost religious. And mocking, too.

I have my children.

The verb “to have.” It’s a troublesome one. It’s not a verb I’m familiar
with. The more time goes by, the more I lose. The more I lose, the freer I am. The freer I am the more I wish I weren’t so free. What am I supposed to do with all this freedom?

Make Cécile an offer, for example.

I’ll turn to face her and I’ll explain myself. I’ll tell her about Mathieu. About me, my children, Christine, about how life takes sudden strange turns.

I’ll apologize for London.

Because of course I remember.

We’ll go back over all that, get things off our chests, I’ll manage to cheer her up, she’ll forget that she’s a busy married woman, a mother, I’ll throw down the gauntlet, Cécile, let’s go back to London, right now, I’ll make you forget that trip we took together, have you ever been back to London, Cécile? It’s a great city, you know. No, don’t tell me I ruined it
for you. I did? No! Really? Then we have to fix that, whaddya say, right away, let’s drop everything—work, spouse, kids—and disappear for forty-eight hours to England, or more, if we get along.

Are you up for it?

You’re on.

Right now.

Well, two or three minutes from now.

However long it takes for me to get used to the idea of such a sudden departure, together.

No, I had something to do with it, too.

I shouldn’t be disingenuous. I wasn’t the type of girl who had men turning around as I walked by. And I didn’t do anything to encourage them. I preferred wearing baggy clothes and shapeless sweatshirts; guys must’ve thought I spent my weekends sprawled in front of the television. And so they were often pleasantly surprised when I took my clothes off. And
discovered that I actually had a figure.

Plus shyness.

No, that’s not it, either. I’ve never thought of myself as shy. It was just I didn’t feel like struggling for hours to impose my taste or my point of view, to defend a particular film or rock band or politician. It all seemed useless. I would look at them, all those strutting peacocks, puffing out their chests and crowing louder than anyone.
And sometimes there in the barnyard a few hens would cackle as they pecked around the cocks, and the peahens would spread their feathers, because their song was so horrible; and then there were the graylag geese.
Pasionarias
who took every subject to heart, and they could easily go up an octave to stand up to the kings of the farm, another way of getting attention, of displaying their charms.
And it worked. Men like it when you stand up to them. It arouses their hunting instinct. I wasn’t that kind.

I was worse.

I was one of those girls who are said to have a blank gaze, simply because behind our expressionless masks we hide our true contempt for all the jousting, for all those tinsel princesses and papier-mâché knights in shining armor. And for ourselves, above all. My self-contempt
was equal to my disdain for them. A pretty picture.

But it didn’t show, at all.

I know what people said about me in those days. She’s nice. She’s easygoing. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Quiet. Reserved. A little empty, maybe. Having said that, you can always count on her.

And in bed, did any of that cross his mind, Philippe Leduc? No. He would only have been thinking about his erection,
which he had trouble maintaining. He must have been conjuring images of girls who were flashier than me—famous actresses, rocker chicks in leather pants—and his only aim would have been to stay hard, as long as possible. And to what end? Not for my pleasure, surely, he couldn’t have cared less. Not even for his own. Just out of pride. So he could say, “Sure, I scored.”

Don’t you think we might
have missed something then, Philippe?

Because our bodies were a good fit; because there were times you managed to forget your fear, your obsession with performance, because our skin would touch and the tenderness that came from that caress surprised both of us. We didn’t know that life is long, that our alliances would change, and that, anyway, over time we’d lose
that urge to boast. We didn’t
know we might have been a good match, one of those couples who understand each other intimately, who exchange knowing glances when other people go on and on.

Do you at least remember what it was like afterward?

After lovemaking. My hand on your chest. The sweat on your shoulder. My fingers going down then up again. Neck, belly, cock, still damp. Your chest rising and falling. And your eyes.
The thankfulness as you looked at me. Really looked, deep inside me.

And everything was so easy afterward. Conversation flowed. Moving naked around the room—it all seemed natural. I liked your body. That’s why I remember it so well. Before you came along there were other bodies that left me indifferent, but others still that almost made me want to laugh. None that caught my imagination. And afterward,
it was the same old story. I admired Luc’s body, of course—he seemed to be made for sex. But never again would I find that sense of the familiar that I had with your body.

I’m talking to you, Philippe. This is a declaration, from twenty-seven years away, this is a declaration even though you don’t look at all the way you used to, even though no one notices you anymore, and you’ve sunken into
the anonymity of your fifties where we seem to go all gray and hazy—hardly anyone notices, except for the occasional cruel comment: “He must have been a handsome man,” “I’ll bet she was stunning.”

I’m talking to you and you can’t hear me.

I’m trying to be ironic.

I’m trying to stop this little wave that is building inside and which is threatening to swell and turn into a breaker just as we
reach the port—the Gare de l’Est, thirty minutes from now, I’ve just glanced at my watch. Thirty minutes left to dive in, into the flotsam of the years gone by, and hope to find a piece of wood, a roof, a boat adrift—to start everything all over again.

What on earth am I saying?

Anything but that.

Remember the last night in London. Remember the tone of his voice in the room that night. And
all the preceding afternoon. How impatient he was. You weren’t interesting anymore. He wasn’t attracted to you anymore. Words hurled like javelins. Hurtful comments, about the way you dressed, your lack of polish, of shine, “an ant in a patch of grass, not even the Queen ant, oh no, anything but, just one ant among all the other ants, the ant par excellence, no critical distance, no ambition, nothing
to make you stand out among the others.”

I remember every word.

Which doesn’t surprise me.

I had buried them in my memory. I’d struggled against them, but I knew very well that I hadn’t destroyed them.

Where did it come from, all that scorn? Couldn’t you simply have come out with a few harmless statements, just acted embarrassed, and told me it was over? Remained dignified? I would have rolled
with the punches. Sure, I’d become attached, after four months—but I was still realistic. I had always known that sooner or later you
would get tired of me.

You wanted to go back to Camden Town. We had been there the night before; I thought it was kind of seedy and not all that interesting. I sighed. I would have preferred to wander around Chelsea or Belgravia. Wander aimlessly, to see how the
locals lived, to allow myself to melt—you were right, and that’s what hurt the most—allow myself to melt into the background. I sighed, and you exploded. The famous last straw. Or the straw that broke the camel’s back. Or the ant, forever lost in the haystack.

The ant.

Did you know I still think about that, a lot?

You never imagine that certain phrases can stick, buried in your skin like splinters,
and that at certain moments in life they come back and wreck everything.

My grandfather had fought at Verdun. He was very young. A shell exploded a few yards away from him. He had shrapnel in his legs all his life, and from time to time, with the changing seasons, a shell fragment would say,
Give him my kind regards.

Those two words were my shell fragments.

Some years ago, maybe eight or nine,
Valentine was in primary school, we came home one evening and the kitchen had been invaded by thousands of flying ants. They had built a nest under the sink in a hole in the wall and we hadn’t noticed. Valentine was screaming and there I was, the one who was usually solid as a rock in our family, the one who knew how to lay tiles, mix plaster,
change a tire better than Luc, or talk about horsepower
and aerodynamics, there I was, the woman who could tell off telemarketers and nosey real estate agents: I went to pieces. Because of some flying ants, treating me like their equal, crawling all over me, welcoming me in their midst, at last you’re back. For a few minutes I lost my mind.

Valentine remembers.

Luc, too.

If he hadn’t come home just in time, I don’t know what would have happened.

And yet I fought it.

I did nothing else, after I got back from London. Everything was very clear in my mind. The things I would no longer put up with. Who I would become. Every decision I made that night I followed to the letter. Those decisions gave structure to my life. Gave meaning to the direction I was headed in. Never again would I be an ant. Never again would I taste that bitterness.

No one, today, would dare to compare me to an ant. Not a single person I know would ever think of such a thing.

The only one who sometimes still feels the shell, the formic acid, the little legs wriggling: that’s me, and me alone—and it’s because of you, Philippe Leduc.

I ought to tell you.

I shift slightly toward you in my seat.

You look so lost. You haven’t even noticed that I’m looking at
you. You’re in one of those moments when
everything goes slack—muscles, skin, consciousness; your mind wanders and disappointment accumulates, along with feelings of failure. There is only one thing a person feels like doing when they see you like that, you know, and that would be to put their arm around your shoulder and tell you not to worry, everything will turn out all right.

And you must
be thinking about the person you never became, that sharp, brilliant man you seemed destined to become. Someone who would leave their mark. Who would pose for magazines. Like Mathieu Coché. Is that what you’re thinking, Philippe? About how you’ve failed—and with a vengeance—and you’ve ended up on the 6:41 train, like me?

Except that thanks to you I am not what I seem. Even if the ant inside me
did drive me to travel second class, yet again, when really I could easily have afforded first.

With your face only a few inches from mine, I’m trying to sound you out, but I can’t.

You’re unfathomable, Leduc.

That’s the least of your faults.