Voice Over (24 page)

 

 

They'll leave the following weekend. When he announces it to her the next evening, there is no mistaking his change of heart. His voice is firmer, more cheerful than usual. Making up his mind to go away with her appears to have temporarily settled the matter for him, whereas previously his only response was to
avoid her. Your ticket will come through the post. He arranges to meet her by the entrance to customs on Saturday morning at 8.30, half an hour before departure. Will that be OK? I don't have a passport. He reminds her that she only needs her identity card, because of the EU. She knew about the existence of the European Union, but she hadn't been aware of the passport thing. The free movement of goods and people, young lady; but that doesn't mean you can forget your card. He tells her that it's going to be good, really good, she'll see. She gets a sudden, overwhelming urge to touch him through the receiver. See you Saturday, then.

She didn't dare ask him what he's going to tell Ange to justify his absence. Probably a lie similar to the one he told her. A business trip. But Ange won't be waiting, at least not in the way she had, because when all is said and done Ange is the one he'll go back to. Or maybe not. She smiles to herself. There is a mirror next to her, and she sees herself in it. Not quite the same face, at least different from the one she saw that day in the toilets at the bar. A somewhat troubling discovery. Not that she finds herself more beautiful or younger, feature by feature her face hasn't changed at all. Yet she is more herself, closer to the ideal image of who she thinks she is. She shuts her eyes, opens them again, the impression persists. She wants to say hello, as if she were meeting herself for the first time, a bit nervous but fully intent on getting to know this new version of herself in the mirror. It didn't occur to her to ask him how long they will be gone. To play it safe, she'll ask for four days off.

She finds a nylon sports bag buried in a back corner of the hallway closet. With broad red and white stripes, a single zip, an adjustable strap, and tiny fluff balls of dust clinging to its
edges. She doesn't remember buying it. Or receiving it as a present. Or having put it away there, or ever having used it. It probably belonged to the previous tenant, who mislaid it or just left it there to get rid of it, too lazy or too guilty to throw it away. The presence of an abandoned bag in her apartment strikes her as an excellent omen. A bit on the small side maybe, yet without any visible defects. But if they are only going away for two days, which seems likely given the circumstances, she doesn't need to take too much. And if by luck they were to prolong the adventure, she considers it equally sensible not to overburden herself.

She has laid out two piles of clothes on her bed. The essentials and the optionals. Panties, bras and socks are separate. In the pile of essential items is her talismanic black dress, worn the previous day at the brother's apartment. She looks over the two mounds, trying to imagine herself in the streets of London wearing each outfit, like a model at an open-air fashion show. She would walk confidently, smiling as if she loved strutting about, and the delirious spectators would be applauding. She wonders if the English sulk as much as the French. She seems to remember that they have a reputation for being quite pale, because of the bad climate, that the men are blond and the women aren't admired for any special physical traits. She decides to remove the red dress from the pile of optionals and stuffs it into a drawer. No point in carrying the memory of Maxime all the way to another country. She still has to eliminate a sweater and a pair of trousers before her travel wardrobe can fit inside the orphaned bag, which she has trouble calling her own. One hour later, the bag is ready. There was no need, of course, to get her things ready so soon. But this way she doesn't run the risk of
leaving something behind in the rush, which she would later regret having forgotten. She makes sure that her identity card is in her handbag. She puts the sports bag on the floor in the hallway so she can say to herself every evening on returning home from work, this is the proof that we're going away. Two days later, the tickets are in her mailbox, satin-smooth, stiff, flawless. One Paris-London ticket, one London-Paris ticket. She reads everything that is printed on them, from the top left to the bottom right. There's her name, the name of the two cities, the departure and arrival times, her carriage and seat number, the price, and all those figures whose meaning she has never understood. She counts on her fingers, happily realizing that she was right: they aren't going away for two days but four. She carefully puts the tickets in her bag for safekeeping.

 

 

Outside the door to the men's toilets, Mr. Merlinter is standing in front of her. You want to go away? He observes her with impatient eyes, which blink repeatedly as though he wanted to change the image on his retina that obstinately remains the same, in spite of his obvious efforts. This morning she happened to pass him in the hall and rather than going to see him in his office, which would have felt like an official visit and forced her boss to adopt an attitude appropriate to his rank, that is to say, busy and unbending, she preferred to approach him before he disappeared into the toilets, thereby offering the lovely possibility of keeping their talk short. Even though he isn't supposed to involve himself in the private lives of his subordinates, Mr. Merlinter has not been able to resist the temptation. Feigning an air of detachment, he had to enquire just what she was intending to do with herself during the time off he might or might not give
her. I need a holiday. She used the magic word on purpose. All the girls in her office say they need a holiday. Impossible therefore for him to fault her for the uniqueness of her request or the abnormality of her behavior. As well as blinking, Mr. Merlinter's eyes are now darting back and forth between her and the toilet door handle. How many days? Four. She said the right number. The day before, after packing the previous tenant's red and white bag, she had rehearsed her speech, so as not to be tempted to reduce it when confronted by her boss' inquisitive look. Four . . . Mr. Merlinter half-opens the door as if to confer with the people who might be inside. Mustn't flinch now. Mr. Merlinter has one foot on the tiled floor. Four is fine, but even so check into whether you have that much time coming to you. Of course, she says. The door has already closed behind him.

 

 

She hesitates. Then, on the day before the trip, she decides to ask one of her co-workers, a fairly calm and courteous woman who sits to her right, if she has ever been to London. The woman ponders for a few seconds, surprised to be consulted on the matter or perhaps surprised that she is being consulted at all. It's nice if you like to walk, there are monuments, but the people aren't much fun and it rains all the time. No matter, they'll stay indoors. In bars, which won't be much of a change for them, or at the hotel, if in fact he's planning for them to stay at a hotel. There must be plenty of museums, he'll certainly want to go to them. She won't refuse, even if she always ends up feeling painfully bored in such places, burdened by a sense of obligation to admire all the works on display. As for monuments, she's not too keen on those either. Big Ben, that's the name that comes up whenever London is mentioned. She imagines
that it must be more or less what the Eiffel Tower is to Paris. She makes a mental note to slip her umbrella into the sports bag. One of the ribs has come loose, but it still keeps the rain off pretty well. They'll just have to huddle together. He'll put his arm around her neck, she'll slip hers around his waist. A fine and beautiful cliché, worthy of the best romances of her age, which she will be all too happy to imitate.

That same evening, she checks the contents of the sports bag for the fifth and final time, and adds the umbrella. She is lifting her leg to step into a special London-departure bath, and just like that the telephone starts to ring. She rushes forward with little steps, holding one hand over her crotch, supporting her breast with an arm, stark naked in the middle of the living room. Yes hello, it's Olivier Chedubarum. Talkative, in high spirits. She eventually understands that the photographs are ready and that he wants to show them to her. I'm off to London tomorrow. How she has adored saying those words, with a hint of weariness in her voice, as if it were all one to her, as if it were no more than a dull, routine occurrence that she was obliged to mention. It's her revenge, a way of lifting her nose at the entire world, which continues to play its tricks, uncaring, and which has now delegated a single spokesman to her in the person of Olivier Chedubarum. With him? Yes, with him. She's said it, she's in heaven. Now someone will know they're going away, alone, the two of them together. Olivier Chedubarum suggests meeting up that very evening so he can give her copies of the best photos. She hesitates, she has to get up early the next morning. But at that moment everything seems so perfect that she has no desire to deny herself anything or to act for purely rational reasons. A last little outing to mark the occasion, to celebrate
her departure. The water in the bath is untouched and cold when she approaches the Père-Pinard, a café on the Place des Halles at seven o'clock.

She recognized the phrase. It's my birthday, I'm forty today. She imagines . . . the idea delights her; she's about to say to him, look, I know you, realizing that he said it on purpose to pull her leg, to make a joke about the past, to invite her along to the café. She turns around: Momo isn't talking to her but to a tall, fine-looking girl who is firmly shaking her head. And when his eyes sweep over the place where she is standing, he doesn't stop, doesn't notice her. Point taken. That day, Momo had stumbled onto her by chance, because she had been the one to turn around, not because of who she was. She doesn't dare go over; she keeps on walking in the direction of the café, trying hard not to think about it any more.

A cardboard folder is on the table. Olivier Chedubarum stands up, she sits, the waiter sets down two glasses of wine in front of them, the file is opened. What Olivier Chedubarum then shows her causes her to gape. She sees a sister, a cousin, a likeness, but it's not her, not fully. The look in the eyes is hers, but not the expression, which is fierce, severe, and doesn't correspond to anything in herself. Perhaps others have always seen her like this and she simply hasn't known it. She picks up one of the photos to study it more closely. There is a small luminous dot, slightly out of focus, the drop of water that had landed on her upper chest and left a trace on the film before it fell. The tomatoes are the tomatoes she had seen in Olivier Chedubarum's hands. And yet her face is not the face she thought she had presented to the photographer. Gone is the sense of well-being she had experienced in the glow of the enormous
lamps. Nevertheless, it had seemed to last for a long time, long enough to be captured on film. You don't like them? It doesn't seem to be me. Olivier Chedubarum bursts out laughing. You look good, though. A nice way to say the image flatters her, that she looks better in it than in real life. That's not what I mean. But how to explain it to him? She wonders if the result would have been the same if the pictures had been taken by a different photographer. It might be Olivier Chedubarum's eye that has transformed her, but how can she be sure? Actually, you can keep them. Olivier Chedubarum shakes his head. I'll end up believing you think I'm a bad photographer. She doesn't know a thing about photography, she's in no position to judge, it's not that, it's just. Take them anyway, stick them in a drawer, one day you'll wind up liking them. She shrugs her shoulders. After all, she's off to London tomorrow, that's what counts, the photographs are of no importance. To please Olivier Chedubarum, she tucks the folder away in her bag. He then orders another round and starts telling her about how he covered the student riots in May '68 and managed to have his first photographs published in the national press.

 

 

She has lost track of how long she's been listening to Olivier Chedubarum. Yawns twist her mouth out of shape, but she is unable to control them. She has had several glasses of wine, or maybe only one, which she is finishing off now. She has to go home. Her legs are dragging her down. She is in a taxi. She has said goodbye to Olivier Chedubarum, she no longer remembers what he said to her. This time tomorrow she'll also be in a taxi, but in London, with him. As she lies down on her bed, she thinks of a bushy-haired puppet called Big Ben.

She opens her eyes. Remembers. Sticks the face of the alarm clock up against her bleary eyes. Several long seconds go by before she can focus on the slender hands. When she finally makes them out, the world around her suddenly shrinks, leaving only the narrowest slit through which to try and escape the inevitable. 8.10, ten past eight in the morning. Horrible horror. How could she have let it happen? If she had the time, she'd punish herself by giving her head a good bang against her bedroom wall, but she only has twenty minutes to get to the station. She puts on the clothes she finds on the floor, then her coat, slings the sports bag and her handbag over her shoulder, looks for her keys, hears objects dropping to the floor without knowing what they are, finds her keys on the kitchen table, battles with her feet and shoes to get the former into the latter, glimpses 8:15 somewhere, opens the door, locks the door, rushes down the stairs, in the street, quick glance to the right, to the left, hesitates, searches her mind for the shortest route to the station, begins to run. The bags knock against her sides, she does her best to hold them in place, but the tighter her grip the harder it is to run. She brushes up against several passers-by, who give her long stares, she would like to shout insults at them, she sprints at the crossings to avoid red lights. Her heart is knocking around in her chest. Fire spreads across her forehead, temples, cheeks. A stitch is stabbing her in the belly, she breathes out forcefully to soften the pain. Her legs are weighed down by the alcohol still circulating in her blood, her stomach is begging for food, her brain distracts her by churning out thoughts. Don't miss that train, no matter what, don't stop, get as far as customs, want it enough to make it, even if you have no more breath, keep running until the end, until the meeting place, run, don't stop, find him, go faster, faster still, get
there, don't miss that train. Her métro pass isn't in her bag, her métro pass is in her bag. She feeds her ticket into the machine and starts running again. People are in front of her, they don't get out the way, they're stupid and slow, wrapped up in themselves, wearing earphones, deep in conversation, they all want to stop her from getting there. Excuse me. She calls out the words from a distance so they'll reach their target before she does and she can run past the obstacles without slowing down. She has to stop on the platform to wait for the métro. The tracks go all the way to the station. She'd climb down into the tunnel and start running in the dark and the damp to get there on time. The beating of her heart resounds in her eardrums, every fold of her skin is brimming with sweat. The whoosh of the train, the approaching headlights. She gets on. She would like to do something to make the ride go faster. She forces herself to catch her breath, she's bright red. Several passengers watch her as she bends over, hands on her knees. Finally the letters “gare du Nord” glide past through the windows. The doors open. She runs out onto the platform, up the escalator, along the corridors, spots the signs marked “Eurostar,” she knows the way, she's on home ground, she's been here hundreds of times, she's about to collapse. She enters the station concourse. People, too many people, people everywhere. She threads her way, avoiding the groups that come streaming towards her, the kids lounging around on the floor. Don't miss the train, so close. She looks up. The clock shows 8.55. Impossible, that can't be right, she keeps going, staggers up the last steps, barely ten yards to go before customs. The platform is empty. No one, not a passenger in sight, he's nowhere to be seen, he isn't there, no one but the customs people in their glass cages. She goes over. As if from thin air, a woman in a blue
uniform rises up in front of her. Boarding is over, Miss. She has no more breath, no more saliva, no more words. She puts out her hand, her head is spinning, her ears abuzz. You can't go through, boarding is over. Do you hear me?