Crush (4 page)

—My sweet, you know I love you more than anything in the world? he announced.

Unable to guess what he was getting at, Amélie remained silent, awaiting his next sentence.

—This evening I could take you to my goddaughter’s wedding, but I don’t wish to do so.

She stared at him in amazement. He went on:

—I’m divorced; we are not engaged. If you come with me this evening you’ll be taken for an escort girl. I love you too much to introduce you to my friends under such conditions. You understand?

—Of course I do. Never mind, my love. I’ll be just fine here. I’ll wait for you peacefully.

David’s explanation satisfied her, and she was relieved at the thought of not having to face a crowd of foreigners with strange ways.

—I haven’t brought you here to drop you. Who do you take me for? Leila, my goddaughter, the one who is getting married this evening, is coming to the hotel beauty parlor to have her hair done . . .

—I don’t see what it has to do with us . . . , Amélie retorted. She was exasperated by David’s incomprehensible train of thought, and even more so by the manner in which he addressed her, as though she were an illiterate moron.

—I called her from Paris to set things up. She’ll come for you around five, after her hairdresser appointment. She’ll take you to her home, where she’ll introduce you as a friend from Paris come by surprise to her wedding. I’ll get there at eight, as part of the male contingent of the wedding procession. You’ll see. It’s a magnificent spectacle!

—But I don’t want you to leave me alone! she cried out: overcome by panic. What shall I tell them if they ask me how
I met her, how long have we known one another, that kind of thing.

David burst out laughing, certain she was putting on an act. She wasn’t. Amélie’s vivid imagination was filled at this moment by harems oozing with kohl, overflowing with Turkish delight, and all the stories read or heard about women taken advantage of by apparently civilized, moderate Moslems.

—Listen, say as little as possible. You’ll be just fine.

As much as Amélie enjoyed the gratuitous telling of tall tales, she did not care to lie under duress. She felt David was ordering her life without consulting her. He had imagined this scenario on his own, without ever thinking she had a contribution to make, or envisioning the charming possibility of a shared imposture. It had never crossed his mind. She, who measured her respect for others by the quality of the elaborate lies she spun for them, felt humiliated, scorned. David was treating this little comedy in a trifling manner; he had bungled it. Moreover, he expected to be applauded!

—Wait a minute! Tell me if I’m wrong. Your idea is that I’ll be a member of the wedding of someone I don’t know, while pretending not to know you?

—Leila will come to your rescue. She’ll introduce you to people . . . She’s a love of a girl, and so beautiful. She’s had a crush on me since she was a kid.

Amélie was about to regurgitate this twaddle when the doorbell rang. It was Leila, arriving promptly at five. Disheveled, still in her robe, Amélie saw a honey-skinned siren barge into the room and throw herself in David’s arms. Looking her over, Leila was aghast at Amélie’s lack of style, but she soon recovered, and even seemed happy to note that her rival paled
by comparison. A radiant beauty, bursting with health, Leila introduced herself, then suggested a bit archly that Amélie might have to change for the wedding.

Generally methodical and self-controlled, Amélie felt a lump of anguish and jealousy rise in her throat. Having lost her composure, she was incapable of any efficient action. She could not locate the right color bra, nor the indispensable shoulder pads for her elegant silk shirt. Moreover, her only pair of black panty hose was marred by a run.

She despised herself for failing to be radiantly lovely, able to shake Leila’s self-confidence even for a moment. Then she tried to reason herself out of this frame of mind. She was behaving like a kid. After all, she was nothing but bother for this young woman on her wedding day. Having more or less pulled herself together, she crammed her makeup kit into her handbag, together with the bra she had finally located. She felt unable to deal with her irrational fears: humiliated by David’s total casualness, she felt like a schoolgirl, abandoned by her family to the mother superior of a boarding school. Just before leaving, a grandiloquent David whispered in her ear:

—Tonight, my love, remember my eyes will be making love to you amid the crowd. We probably won’t be able to speak. But there’s no need for words to reach an understanding.

Skeptical yet reassured by the loving inflections of David’s voice, Amélie followed Leila into her grey coupe. She was dazzling, intimidating, with her henna-tinted hands, her heavy braided chignon studded with pearls.

—Am I wearing too much makeup? she inquired, suddenly humanly nervous.

They entered the house through kitchens humming with activity. The floor was cluttered with bric-a-brac, cauldrons, sideboards littered with mess and filth. Everything was topsy-turvy. The palace’s backyard was a pigpen of crockery, copper pots, and dishes. Railed at on arrival by hysterical women at the end of their rope, Leila led Amélie up the stairs to the second floor. She introduced her to her sisters standing on the landing:

—This is Amélie, a friend from Paris. We’ll have to find her a caftan. Farida, would you take care of this?

Amélie did not know where to go, who to follow. Unable to make up her mind, she was standing there when five fat crones, wearing white baggy dresses, let out strident ululations. Their curled tongues moved swiftly against the roof of their mouths, while their eyes acquired a glassy stare, an expression of concentrated indifference. Their tanned skins were leathery, their faces dotted with suture-like kohl markings. They were singing the praises of the future bride. Leila protested: “That’s too much. They’ve taken to following me everywhere I go!”

They handed Amélie a violet caftan adorned with moiré patterns she deemed frightful. Following the flow of people coming and going, she found herself in a bathroom crammed with women. No one in that cackling henhouse paid her the least attention. Amélie put on the cumbersome gown, whose innumerable small buttons required reserves of patience, and whose hem made her trip. No doubt she lacked experience, so far as she could gauge by the dexterity of her fellow prisoners. Bundled up in this shapeless vestment, which made her look insipid, she knew that in comparison
with the Oriental women crowded around her she did not possess an iota of style.

Leila appeared in the frame of the door, inquiring as to the hospitality that had been extended to her. One glance and she knew what was needed:

—You’ve got to have a belt, she decreed.

Amélie thanked her, assured her that she felt wonderful. Gradually the bathroom was emptying of people. Amélie found herself alone with Sophie, Leila’s French friend, a pretty blonde who approached her with the good-natured frankness of girls who feel good about themselves. “I’m getting old,” Amélie told herself as she listened to the girl’s account of her course of studies, and her boyfriends. What could she possibly say to Sophie? Perhaps tell her age to mark a distance. She could not mention her children, her husband, least of all David. She had outgrown the age of dressing-room confessions. Sophie began to question her:

—How long have you known Leila?

—Not very long . . .

—How and where did you meet her? Was it in Paris?

—Yes, in Paris, at the home of mutual friends. Amélie was groping for a way to end this conversation.

Clearly, filling out the loose bits of information to make her story more believable was of no use. Sophie obviously knew all about her affair with David: she hinted with the ridiculous pride some people derive from their intimacy with the rich and famous that she was Leila’s sole and most effective confidante. Best to cut this short.

Announced by the rumbling of drums, the men’s procession was starting on the ground floor. Magnificent-looking in spite of his slicked-down hair, an unfortunate habit of his when
she was not around to tousle it, David pretended not to recognize her when their eyes met. That’s what she’d been afraid of. The silent complicity he had promised her had vanished at the very first glance. Only the emptiness of the evening lay ahead.

Amélie took note of the beauty of the women, the pleasure the men took in displaying their own importance. However, she didn’t have the detachment required for an anthropological analysis. Alone in the crowd, surrounded by empty space, she felt vulnerable.

She had the impression of being on exhibit, like a statue. She sought some consolation from her thoughts: Were she to choose her place in a museum, she knew now she’d prefer to disappear amid
The Bourgeois of Calais,
rather than star alone as
The Thinker.
Indifferent, curious, appraising or critical glances seemed to lose their sharpness when spread out across a crowd.

She moved about, unable to listen to the orchestra, or take part in the meal. What’s the point of dancing without your partner, of eating without your table companion? All at once, she noticed the bride’s sisters. They were whispering and pointing at her. Curiosity or ill will? Her discomfort turned to humiliation. She imagined the gossip passing from one to the other: Wasn’t she the mistress of their dear uncle, the very one they had to pretend not to know anything about? If he had planned to protect her reputation, he had most certainly failed: She was presently the chief piece of gossip of the evening. His insistence on ignoring her presence was a disastrous move. With the whole family in the know, it began to look like a disclaimer.

She tried to reason with herself without feeling persecuted, when in reality she moved surrounded by general
indifference. She sought a quiet corner to spend the rest of the evening. Seated on a sofa, she realized that, restful as this position was, it failed to set her mind at rest. The least look inflicted a wound.

The only solution was to keep moving. She had to bestir herself. There was nothing suspicious about her shifting from place to place. One could assume she was looking for friends, getting something to drink, going to the bathroom. She got a glimpse of David. High on booze and old friendships, he exulted, ogling pretty women, lavishing manly embraces on his old pals. Was she jealous? she wondered. Certainly not. She did not even pine to join him. At this moment she hated him.

She gave herself up to the wicked pleasure of dissecting him, making mincemeat out of him. He thought only of himself! He wanted her at his beck and call, as the mirror image of his own demeanor.

He claimed to know the ingredients necessary to her happiness; she needed him, craved his reassuring presence, his strength, his ability to make decisions. This certainty, his belief in the cliché that women need to depend on men, allowed him to avoid thinking of her as a complex, ever-changing individual. He did not have to put himself in her place. Since he only harbored good feelings toward her, he was convinced that he fulfilled her just as much. It went without saying. No need, then, to look at her in the course of the evening. Having glimpsed her, he had emitted signs of a joyful complicity he actually shared only with himself. If she were drowning under his very eyes, he would no doubt have winked at her in merry encouragement.

Amélie was tired; she felt out of place amid the frenetic rhythm of this triumphant feast. Far from everyone’s gaze, she
locked herself up in the second-floor bathroom. Erasing from her face the fixed smile she’d been wearing all evening, she burst into tears and fell asleep. Upon awakening, she observed on her cheek the mark left by the bath sheet she had used as a pillow. It provided a fine excuse for not returning at once to the ground floor. She was going to linger just where she was until recovering a human face, and freshening her makeup. Thereupon, a host of cockroaches invaded the room. Trembling with disgust, she changed her mind and joined the party.

By half past twelve, she had memorized every detail of the reception rooms: paintings, furniture, carpets . . . Leaning on a sideboard, glass in hand, she wondered what profit she might possibly derive from this wedding party. She felt like an ordinary clerk teetering on the brink of incompetence. She had covered the party like a dutiful tourist visiting one Roman ruin after another. Now she was running low, like a car on empty. Moreover, her feet were killing her.

However, it was still early, too early to tell David she wanted to go. She indulged in higher mathematics: Having left at five in the afternoon, she had just completed seven and a half hours of presence, whereas David, who came three hours later, had barely concluded four and a half hours of fun. “All right! Let’s see now . . .” she told herself, trying to catch her breath in the middle of a train of thought that augured complications as tricky as the math problems of her childhood. One of them, she recalled with a shudder, was about measuring water outflow within a given time span from some putative faucet. She pondered: “Considering that a successful dinner party lasts four hours (between eight-thirty and half past twelve), I must endure another hour for David to feel he really partied. Let’s call it fifty minutes!” she
concluded, pleased with the time cut she had secured for herself.

At a quarter to one, the exhilarated assembly was suddenly seized in a swirling motion that Amélie compared to weather forecasts: “Morning mists and passing storms . . . ,” or the pilot’s warning: “Fasten your seat belts. Turbulence ahead!” She cast herself in the role of a meteorologist looking into the eye of a cyclone, and found herself face-to-face with David:

—What’s up?

Regretfully diverting his attention from a moving silhouette, David answered:

—That’s the crown prince. He’s just left an official dinner party to congratulate Leila in person.

—Oh, she replied simply.

—Don’t tell me you didn’t notice all the body-guards!

He was scolding her. His tone filled Amélie with rage.

—I can’t take it anymore, she hissed. I’m leaving. Where can I find a taxi?