The Woman With the Bouquet (17 page)

“He doesn’t like patent leather?”

“He’s blind. I mean the sound they make . . . they sound like the shoes I had at my First Communion . . . I need a sexier sound.”

Delighted, the shop assistant brought a few styles with sleek curves.

“These are good,” said Stéphanie, stunned by the harmony between the sound and the appearance. “Now I just have to choose the color.”

“The color is easier because that’s just for you.”

Encouraged by her remark, Stéphanie decided on one style that she bought in two colors, red and black. In her heart of hearts she wasn’t really sure about buying the carmine pumps, because she wondered if she’d ever wear them but, that day, thanks to Karl, she experienced the joy of a little girl who dreams of going off with all her mommy’s sexy clothes.

On Thursday she hid her purchases in an old sports bag and went to the hospital.

At ten minutes past ten, when she was certain there wouldn’t be any doctors coming in, she whispered into Karl’s ear.

“I brought my shoes.”

She went back out, put her clogs in such a way that she could slip them on quickly if they were disturbed, and then she put on the black pumps.

“Time for your treatment!”

She began her work by his bed. Her pointed heels tapped vigorously on the floor, quivered when she stopped, then slipped gently.

Karl grinned from ear to ear.

“What bliss,” he murmured.

Suddenly Stéphanie felt like trying the scarlet pair.

“Wait, I brought some others. Oh, they’re not very different but . . .”

This time it was for herself alone that she put on the pair in crimson lambskin, and on she went with her chores, amused and a bit titillated.

Karl suddenly asked, “Is the strap narrower?”

“No.”

“Can you see more of your foot? Is it more cut away?”

“No.”

“Is it snakeskin?”

“No.”

“Then what color are they? They wouldn’t be red by any chance?”

Stéphanie confirmed they were, dumbfounded. Not only had the car accident damaged Karl’s optic nerve, but he was also wearing a thick bandage over his eyes. So how . . .

Almost frightened, she hurried to the door, took off the heels, put her work shoes back on, and buried the two new pairs in her bag.

“Thank you,” whispered Karl, “you spoiled me.”

“How did you guess?”

“I couldn’t see the difference but I could feel you, you were very different in the second pair: you didn’t move the same way, your hips were swaying. I bet that’s the pair you wear when you want to please Ralf. Am I right?”

“Hmm . . .”

“I adore your voice, too, you have a fruity, singing, resonant voice. It’s odd, such a full voice is usually characteristic of a black woman! But I don’t think you are black, are you?”

“No. But I do have a few things in common with my colleagues from Martinique.”

“Yes, I can hear that too. A sturdy, wide pelvis, a goddess subtly wrapped in smooth skin.”

“How did you know?”

“The way you sway on your pumps, and again, your voice. Very thin women rarely have a nice voice. As if the voice needs a layer of flesh to attain depth . . . and a wide pelvis to be well grounded, rich in harmonics . . . Isn’t it said of opera singers that they have vocal weight? So if a voice has weight, so must the woman. What bliss!”

“Do you really believe this stuff you’re giving me?”

“Absolutely! A voice feeds on flesh and resonance. If there is neither flesh nor the space to resonate, the voice remains dry. Like the woman. No?”

“Judging by your mistresses, the other day, I thought that you only went for thin women.”

“It’s a combination of circumstances: I’m a photographer by trade, so I often work with models for my fashion shoots. But I love women so much that I love what is thin in thin women and what is ample in ample women.”

As of Friday, Stéphanie again had the weekend off and was at a loss. How was she going to get through three days without him?

So she decided to do things for him: she spent several hours in a beauty salon, then she treated herself to a hairdresser, managed to get an appointment to have her nails done, and then once she was back in her studio, she opened her wardrobe to have a strict look at her clothing.

“What would he like? What couldn’t he like? I’m going to make two piles.”

She forced herself not to cheat, emptied out her shelves and on Saturday dropped several bags off outside the offices of the Red Cross.

On Sunday she decided to go back to Barbès in order to fill her empty wardrobe and think about what Karl had explained about curvy women. If he liked them, she should manage to do the same. Sitting in a sidewalk café, she watched people come and go.

What a contrast between Barbès and Chinatown! Such a distance from her neighborhood! From the Asian streets to the African streets, everything changed, not only the smells—the green and yellow smells of Chinatown, a mixture of herbs and roots, were replaced by the scarlet, spicy, demanding smells in Barbès, of roasted lamb or grilled merguez—and the life on the street—sidewalks overflowing in Barbès and deserted streets in Chinatown; but the women as well . . . The women differed in size, allure, clothing and above all in their very concept of femininity. The Barbès women emphasized their shape by wearing lycra or enhanced it with gorgeous
boubous
, loose and colorful; while the women in Chinatown disappeared into floppy jackets, hiding any suggestion of breasts beneath a straight, mannish row of buttons, or any trace of their hips and thighs in dull trousers.

The majestic African women were regal in their loose dresses or clinging tights; they swayed to and fro beneath warm male gazes. Not for one second did they question their powers of seduction. Not for one second would they view a wolf whistle or a wink as mocking. They walked along displaying composure, insolence, and guts, so sure of their irresistible charm that they came out winners every time. Like the men around her, Stéphanie thought they were gorgeous.

She mused that if her mother were sitting there beside her at that moment, Léa would sigh as if someone were inflicting a tank parade upon her, or a visit to an institute for the handicapped, or a ballet of whales. Stephane realized that her self-disparaging attitude came from her narcissistic mother, who was a self-proclaimed standard of beauty. And it hadn’t helped matters that she had left Léa to move into the Chinese neighborhood, only to find herself surrounded by tiny, ravishing models, who merely exacerbated her complex.

A scrawny, anemic redhead went by: she even looked like Léa. Stéphanie sniggered: a firefly among the marmots, that was all! Here, among these giant women, such thinness became dryness; a flat stomach meant bones showing through.

Stéphanie concluded that notions of attraction were profoundly relative; thus, greatly heartened, she went home, humming. As she was walking along the Avenue de Choisy, between the Tang supermarket and the Maison du Canard Laqué, she suddenly concluded that, after all, given her height and her glow, she must be perfectly magnificent.

Standing in front of her full-length mirror she contemplated a new woman. Her reflection had changed only slightly—her clothes, hairstyle, attitude—but an inner light—confidence—had changed her, made her a pretty, curvaceous girl with a generous bosom. She had Karl to thank for that, and she waited eagerly for the next day.

When on Monday she went through the door of room 221, the doctors’ presence irritated her: it was all she could do not to chase them out the way she’d chased out the mistress, so that she could be alone with Karl; but then the nature of their gathering rang an alarm bell. Stéphanie slipped into the room, pressed up against the wall behind the interns, and adopted the modest attitude appropriate for a nurse.

With his hairy forearms and his paper mask below his chin, Dr. Belfort was worried. After a few consultations in a hushed voice with his assistants, he led the team into the meeting room to discuss the situation because, like several of the top doctors at the Salpêtrière, he felt more at ease with illnesses than with patients.

Stéphanie followed the group. As they began to go over the test results, Stéphanie learned, aghast, just how serious Karl’s condition was. After several weeks, the doctors’ vital prognosis remained just as cautious, if not more so, as when he was taken from the ambulance. All their hopes rested on the operations that Dr. Belfort planned to perform soon.

Stéphanie felt not only dejected but ashamed. In that room 221 where she had been running every day to live the most magical moments of her life, Karl was living the worst moments of his, perhaps the last. Lying inert in his bed, his body hooked up to rubber tubes and pouches of liquid, all alone in a tiny room at the mercy of the interns or medical students who were analyzing and commenting, he didn’t own anything anymore, he didn’t do anything anymore, he wasn’t experiencing anything, and he was only surviving through the help of technology. She deeply resented her own selfishness; she was a monster, as childish, vain, and flirtatious as Karl’s mistresses.

Consequently, that day, to punish herself, she refrained from going to visit him, and arranged for someone else to take over his treatment.

On Tuesday, when she went back to see Karl, she found him very weak. Was he asleep? She went closer, leaned over his face, but his nostrils did not react. She eventually murmured, “Karl, it’s Stéphanie.”

“Ah, at last . . .”

His voice came from somewhere deep inside his body, trembling with emotion. Her presence seemed to affect him.

“Four days without you, that’s too long.”

Although he was blind, he turned toward her.

“I haven’t stopped thinking about you. I was waiting for you.”

“Every day?”

“Every hour.”

He was speaking gravely, without lying. She began to cry.

“Forgive me. I won’t go away again.”

“Thank you.”

She knew that such an absurd dialogue was anything but professional: she shouldn’t make such promises, and a patient does not have the right to demand them. And yet this bizarre episode enabled her to gauge the affection between them. While you couldn’t say that they loved one another, you might at least suppose that they needed each other.

“Do something kind for me, Stéphanie.”

“Yes, Karl, what do you want?”

“Take a mirror and describe your eyes to me.”

What a bad idea, she thought regretfully, I have such ordinary brown eyes. What a pity he couldn’t ask her mother on the other hand; she was so proud of her blue eyes.

Stéphanie went to get a round enlarging mirror and sat by the side of the bed, looking at her reflection.

“The whites of my eyeballs are very white.”

“Like the whites of an egg?”

“Enamel white; they look deep, consistent, like cream that’s been solidified in the oven.”

“Good. And then?”

“A black setting, with a slight twist, sets off the iris and exalts the nuances of color.”

“Ah . . . tell me about it.”

“There’s brown, bistre, beige, fauve, red, sometimes a hint of green. It’s much more varied than you’d think.”

“God is in the details. Your pupils?”

“Very black, very sensitive. They become round, and retract, freeze, and expand. My pupils are very talkative, very emotional.”

“Fabulous . . . your eyelids, now.”

The game went on. Eyelashes, brows, scalp, earlobes . . . Guided by a blind man’s gaze, Stéphanie discovered the infinite nuances of the visible world, the unsuspected treasures of her body.

In the changing room, before leaving, she noticed outside her locker a bouquet of pink and purple peonies, set in an elegant foliage, paler than celadon. She picked it up to take it to the reception, never imagining for one second that it might be for her, when a card fell out, and on it was written, in carefully inscribed letters: “For Stéphanie, the most marvelous nurse.”

Who was sending her this tribute? She searched the tissue paper wrapping, gently felt the flowers, explored the stems, in vain: she found neither signature nor clue.

Back at home, she put her present next to her bed so she could gaze at it, convinced it came from Karl.

The next morning, a new bouquet—still peonies, but yellow and red this time—was waiting for her at dawn outside her locker. The same gallant message. The same discretion on the part of the sender.

She went immediately up to room 221 and, during her conversation with Karl, she tried to verify whether he was indeed her generous purveyor. As she was unable to obtain any clues, she came right out with it: “Are you the one I have to thank for the bouquets yesterday and today?”

“I’m sorry not to have thought of it. No, it wasn’t me.”

“Do you swear?”

“To my great shame.”

“But then who?”

“What? You have no idea who your admirer is?”

“Not the slightest idea.”

“Women are insane! It takes forever to get them to open their eyes and see us. Fortunately for men, nature invented flowers . . .”

Stéphanie sulked, more out of sorts than enchanted, particularly as the gifts continued: every day, a new floral composition was left at the foot of her locker.

As a result, she felt obliged to open her eyes and look at the men who surrounded her at the Hôpital de la Salpêtrière, and she noticed, stupefied, that a number of them flashed smiles at her.

At first, she was terrified. What? Were there so many charmers around her, so many males who looked upon her as a woman? Was it really she who had not noticed them before? Or was it that they had only begun to notice her since her adventure with Karl? In shock, almost traumatized, she hesitated between maintaining her previous attitude—walking with her head down, avoiding people’s gazes, withholding her smile—and adopting her new warm, relaxed attitude, where she made eye contact any number of times wherever she went, offering a dozen opportunities to stop and talk.

It was in a moment like this that she first saw Raphaël among a group of stretcher-bearers. It was hard to say exactly what it was that struck her to begin with: the young man’s blazing eyes, or the peony he wore pinned to his white coat. Stéphanie shivered and realized it was a sign, and that she had just met her anonymous admirer.