Enough About Love (16 page)

One day, when he was seriously irritated, he looked through his bookshelves for Drieu La Rochelle’s book
A Woman at her Window
, so that Anna could read these superlatively reactionary, misogynistic words: “Women, who are always ingrained with a powerful realism, can only ever love men for their strength and prestige.”

“There. Do you really want that bastard Drieu to be right?”

“But that’s exactly the way it is,” Anna snapped. “You’re impossible. Look at you: you have a first-class ticket in your pocket but you prefer traveling second-class or staying on the platform.”

“I can’t stand the people in the first-class compartment. If you love me, come and join me in second-class.”

Yves loathed having to string out the metaphor. He thought it was full of pitfalls. If life were a train, who was dodging the fare in first-class, who was checking the tickets? It was bordering on the absurd, he did not want to take it any further.

And yet Anna drives him to change himself. After all, if success makes no difference, then why not be successful? He is not sure he has the profile for it. Every time he hears a note of admiration from the person talking to him, she kisses him. He feels sullied by it, wants to shrug it off like a dog shaking itself after the rain. He feels like an impostor. Feels the whole world is full of impostors.

But he has started writing again, and
Abkhazian Dominoes
is taking shape. Of course, Anna is not wrong. Why should the layout of a book obey a weird and universally forgotten game of dominoes? Yves smiles. And carries on building the edifice, all the more obstinately.

A
T 5 PM IN HIS APPOINTMENTS DIARY
, Le Gall has written “Fabien Dalloz,” and that is exactly the time when the new patient, whom he has never met, rings the bell. As he opens the door to him, Thomas says smoothly: “Fabien Dalloz? Thomas Le Gall. Please come in.”

The man does so and, despite his tremendous height, it is only when Romain Vidal has sat down in the armchair that Thomas recognizes him. Of course: Roman—Fabian, that part’s clear, but getting from Vidal to Dalloz is a job for the dictionary.

Thomas sits down at his desk, opposite Louise’s husband. He thinks briefly of admitting that the ruse has fallen flat, a move that becomes more arduous with every passing second. But the familiarity of his setting and the effect of the surprise make him instinctively pronounce the usual words: “I’m listening.”

At first Romain says nothing. Not for a moment does Thomas imagine this is a coincidence, that Vidal is in this
room for a consultation: Louise has talked to him, and Romain has come to measure up the man who wants to take his wife away. By simply changing his name, he thinks he holds all the cards. But sooner or later Le Gall and the real Romain Vidal will have to meet, and when the time comes to leave the analyst’s office, the false Fabien Dalloz will have no choice but to drop his mask.

Silence settles between them, and Thomas respects it. He does not want to insist that Louise’s husband speak frankly right away.

“I don’t know how to start. I don’t know where to start,” Romain blurts eventually.

Always start at the end, Thomas does not say. If you think of life as a book, you’ll never be able to see where it finishes.

Essentially, however strange it may seem, this conversation might be not unlike a normal session. A man comes to see another man, with a secret that is not entirely a secret, one he will have to consent to disclose. A man who often says nothing.

“Right,” Fabien-Romain says briskly. “In a nutshell, I’m married, we have children, two children, my wife’s met someone, and she said she’s leaving me. It’s pretty straightforward. I’m very … unhappy, but I don’t think having analysis is the answer. It takes years, doesn’t it, but it’s right now that my wife’s leaving.”

Romain stops talking. Thomas opens a notebook, jots down a few words to create a semblance of composure, but can keep the pretense up no longer: “You’re Romain Vidal, aren’t you? I’m sorry but playing cat and mouse isn’t a very good idea.”

Romain looks at him, then lowers his eyes and stares at the foot of the desk lamp. His whole face closes in, his breathing accelerates. Thomas stands up to break away from an analyst’s
typical aloof, seated position. He walks over to the window, gently tilts the slats of a blind. He is waiting for Romain to give in to his anger, his sorrow. As Louise’s husband stays locked in silence, Thomas toys with the blind, smirking as he cannot help thinking this sort of blind is also known as a
jalousie
—a jealousy.

“I can understand why you’re here,” he says. “I felt the same curiosity, to see who you were. I went to one of your conferences.”

An ambulance passes outside, barely audible through the door. Thomas lets it pass, the sound fades.

“As you’re here in my office, you must be expecting something from this meeting. But I don’t know what. You haven’t come to ask me to stop loving Louise.”

“I—I don’t th-think so,” Romain murmurs, possessed by his teenager stammer.

“You’re here to put a face to your fears. That’s a good enough reason.”

Thomas stays looking at the sky, the trees in the courtyard. He is probably not who Romain was expecting.

“You don’t understand. By confronting me here, in this particular place, you’re trying to find the strength to win Louise back. But I’m five years older than you, ten years older than Louise; in other words, I’m old. You’re brilliant, famous even. So why me? It’s almost worse.”

Romain has looked up again. Thomas is still waiting for him to speak, but Romain gazes at motes of dust twinkling in rays of sunlight. The analyst continues, calmly, through a silence punctured by the least noise. “You’re looking at your shattered life as if it were someone else’s. You’re hurt, humiliated. You’ve lost your self-esteem. That’s what most people feel.”

Between each of his sentences, Thomas establishes a pause, leaves a space he would like Romain to fill. But Vidal cannot do it.

“You know, dozens of people have been through this room. People full of pain. My job is to step up and tackle that pain with my own experience of pain. My own pain, Romain, is grief, from a long time ago.”

Thomas has removed any emotion from his voice. By using Romain’s first name, he hopes to extract a response, but the man shows no reaction.

“I know nothing about you,” Thomas goes on. “That’s why what I’m about to say may not apply to you. Often, when a man wants a woman, it gives her a mysterious charm to other people. I’m not casting any doubt on the sincerity of—”

“Shut up.”

Thomas stops talking. They stay like that for a long time, not saying anything. The doorbell rings. The six o’clock appointment is early. Romain unfolds his great body, which seems to be a burden to him today. Thomas follows him, opens the door of his office. At the last moment, Romain turns around. Thomas looks at the hand held out to him, amazed; shakes it. Romain’s handshake is genuine.

All he says is: “Maud told me. About Judith.” The giant’s throat constricts. He cannot get the words “Thank you” out.

“W
HAT DOES ‘UPSET’ MEAN
?”

A little boy asked Anna this question.

Sometimes, on the way home from the hospital, Anna makes a slight detour and drops in on Yves, staying for an hour, or two. She tells him about her day, the patients, the progress they are making. That day, a woman had come to see her with her five-year-old son. It was their tenth visit, she is from Mali, very young, speaks French badly. Her little boy Morad is very restless, has trouble concentrating; it was his nursery school that asked for him to be seen. He sat, quietly, drawing with colored pencils, a tree, a path, in dark shades. Within a few sessions a difficult truth emerged: the mother had never dared tell the child that his father died on a building site two years ago. All she had managed was to say, Daddy’s not here anymore, he’s gone. This absence filled the child with unutterable shame, as he pretended to wait, in vain, for his father to come back,
although he had probably grasped the truth. His mother—powerless and overwhelmed—clung stubbornly to her lie. She thought she could protect her son, distance him from that suffering, but it was from herself that she was distancing him: Morad was alone in his distress.

Anna went on the journey with the mother and child as they took the first steps toward this revelation. All of a sudden, the words were said, and Morad looked at his mother in amazement. It was when Anna told Morad, “Now when you’re upset you can talk to mommy about it,” that the child asked his question.

“What does ‘upset’ mean?”

“Sad. Do you know what it is to be sad?”

The child nodded. Anna looked at him, smiled, and said: “Do you remember your father, Morad?”

The child did not answer. The mother had tears in her eyes.

“What about you,” Anna said, turning to her. “What could you tell Morad about his father? What sort of thing did he like doing with Morad, for example?”

The mother thought for a long time, then murmured: “My husband liked singing. He sang a song, a song from our village.”

“And do you still sing this song with Morad?”

“Oh no, I don’t sing it. I can’t sing.”

“How about you, Morad, can you sing?”

The child looked at his mother, drew a little bear. Anna did not give up.

“Would you agree to sing the song for us?” she asked the mother. “Maybe just the tune?”

The woman consented, squeezing her handkerchief in her hand, silent. Her knuckles went pale. She sang softly, but it took considerable effort.

“Aandi d’beyyib ya mahleh ya mahleh gannouchou khachmou wateh.”

“What’s the song about?”

“It means: ‘I have a little teddy bear, soft and cute, with an adorable nose …’ ”

“So, do you remember it at all, Morad? If you’re sad, maybe you and mommy could sing the song your daddy used to sing when you were a little baby.”

The child smiled at Anna and nodded his head. Yes, he knew the song,
“Aandi d’beyyib ya mahleh.”
He would sing it with his mommy. For his daddy who’s dead. He got it.
“Aandi d’beyyib ya mahleh.”
He was allowed to be upset. Now he knew he could turn to his mother once more, to talk about his father. The mother would be back in her rightful place. She could cope with it now.

Yves listens to Anna. He feels a surge of tenderness, and goes to make a cup of tea before Anna notices the tears in his eyes and makes fun of him.

T
HERE ARE NOT MANY PEOPLE
left in the More or Less Bookstore, and Yves is about to get up from the table where he has been doing signings and join the manager at the register. A man approaches, Yves has not spotted him, he has been waiting until the very last moment to come over: he hands him a copy of
Two-Leaf Clover
.

“Who is it for?” Yves asks.

“To Stanislas and Anna, please. Anna is my wife.”

The tone of voice is not very friendly. Yves looks up, quickly appraises the man. He is tall, early forties, wearing horn-rimmed glasses. His brown cord jacket is like the one Anna tried to get him to buy just three days ago. Of course this Stanislas right here is Anna’s husband, he knows everything, this moment had to happen. Perhaps he has seen them together, perhaps a friend has tipped him off.

Yves wants to buy some time.

“You did say Anna, not Hannah with aitches?”

“No aitches.”

“To Stanislas and Anna …” Yves writes, then he says: “I’m sorry, but do we know each other?”

“No,” Stan replies. “I’m sure we’ve never spoken.”

Stan’s voice is cold, hostile. He opens and closes his fist, agitatedly. Anna once told Yves that if Stan ever found out about the two of them, he might “smash his face in.” He warned Anna: if her husband insulted him, he could accept that, but at the first punch, he would press charges.

The punch never comes. Neither does the bland but subtle dedication appropriate for these exceptional circumstances. Yves merely writes this frequently quoted sentence, borrowed from Diotima in Plato’s
Banquet
and ably transformed by Lacan who then appropriated it:

He hands the book to Stanislas, who glances briefly at the dedication. He is not the man Yves imagined he was. Anna definitely described him the way a child describes her father, overestimating everything. Stan was “very tall”: Yves smiled when he discovered his actual height. It was the same as his. Stan pulls up a chair, sits down close to him.

“I’ve just read one of your books.
Follow On
, is that what it’s called?”

His voice is deep, Yves finds it melodious.

“Yes, it’s a short novel, quite old now.”

“Your writing is very, how shall I put this? Very fluent.”

Yves wrote
Follow On
fifteen years ago. The story of a man with a lot of time on his hands who, out of curiosity, starts
following a woman in the street. He takes pleasure in walking behind her every day. At first the book is built around the notes he makes. He spies on her when she does her shopping or goes for a walk with her children or her husband. Weeks go by. He decides to try and seduce her: he is charming and intelligent, he succeeds, and when the woman falls, becomes infatuated with him, separates from her husband, quite irretrievably, he is suddenly afraid, he leaves her and disappears. Having ravaged the woman’s life.

It is crystal clear where Stan is going with this.

“It isn’t a portrait of a woman, even though it does describe her the whole time. It tells us about a man through the way he sees a woman. What’s his name again?”

“Kostas. And the woman is Camille,” says Yves.

“Kostas, that’s right. Camille has a husband and children, she’s happy. The more he watches her life, the more he realizes how alone he is. It’s her happiness he falls in love with. But he doesn’t really love her.”

“I don’t know. I think he does.”