Monsieur (35 page)

I fixed my ponytail, twisting it around three times, using two separate elastic bands.

I sat on the edge of the bed so I could lace up my shoes properly.

I pretended to send four text messages.

I was biding my time. Doing everything on automatic pilot, feeling dead inside. Finally, hands crossed over my knees, I realized there was nothing else for me to do but leave. Monsieur watched as I shivered and whispered my name. Head held low, below the shield of my hair, I saw his hand slowly moving towards me, open, unthreatening. And then, in a flash, it disappeared and I felt it in my hair, journeying backwards across my head, reaching halfway down my back. I briefly glanced at Monsieur, silently saying
but what in hell do you want me to do?

‘Go,' he said laconically, and it felt so much worse than ‘Stay'.

The whole extent of the tragedy taking place in the room swept across me. What a huge, bloody mess. Hundreds of people had just died in an earthquake in Chile, Earth had possibly changed its course in the heavens, there'd been the thing in Haiti and the only drama I had been involved in, the only thing that could make me cry was leaving this man, eight months of my life, and it felt like my whole life. Like in the cartoons, my eyes had probably gone all red, and I threw myself at him, burying my nose into the softness of his neck, sobbing, my tears flowing, draining through the prickliness of his unshaven morning face. Monsieur dug his nails into my back with such fierceness that it left a mark for some time, a few days at least: three initially pink moon-shaped crescents, which would later turn to red and brown. As I silently sobbed, my cheek against his, he took my tear-stained face between his hands.

‘Look after yourself, please. And don't forget me.'

‘OK,' I promised, sniffing away.

‘OK?'

‘You too, take care of yourself . . .'

‘Swear you will,' Monsieur said, his nose touching mine, as I looked straight into his long lashes and grey eyes, finding no indication of emotion, just his customary neutrality.

‘I swear,' I hiccuped, pulling my face away from his hands.

Right then, did he even have a clue of everything I'd just lived through? I was standing up with difficulty (and how did I even manage that?) while Monsieur was still seated, the wet and sticky shadow of my cheeks on his. I just had to say something, for fear of losing what was left of my sanity, so I added, almost talking to myself:

‘Don't talk to me of memories or farewells. I don't believe in farewells.'

‘Neither do I.'

‘You know,' I said, as I stood yet again on the brink of collapsing, ‘I was fifteen years old when I experienced my first sentimental break-up. I missed an afternoon class because I was so sad. I remember, my father and I walked to the bakery to buy girdle cakes, I was shedding tears like a fountain. I knew he didn't know what to or say to make me feel better – you never could discuss those sort of things with my father – and he said to me
you always come across the people who mean something to you or once meant something again.

Turning my head away to wipe my snot on my collar, I continued:

‘That's all I can think of right now. Such a stupid thing to say.'

‘No, it's a lovely, thoughtful thing to say.'

‘Maybe a bit of both,' I conceded, slipping my jacket on.

Mid-season: it was still March, but May was fast approaching. The air smelled like last year. The chestnut trees were flowering. The sweetness of mangoes. A blend of Habit Rouge, dust and floor polish. The sky the same shade of blue. Was it a clue, the logical conclusion, the closing of circle I had always been unable to decrypt? I would have enough time to think about this on the Métro, as I knew no single track on my iPod would be able to interrupt the frantic flow of my thoughts. Nearby conversation would sweep over me, people would embrace, laugh, listen to the Beatles, read their copies of
Cosmopolitan
. Fucking hell, the world would go on! How was it possible? How could individual universes collapse on themselves and leave the rest of the world unaffected?

As I leaned over to pick up my handbag, I willed myself to faint. But it wasn't that easy.

‘So I'll never see those panties of yours again?' Monsieur said, sounding neither provocative nor funny I must say. Neutral. An open book.

Never again
. Sometimes there are words, standing next to each other, that make you want to feel sick.

I don't believe that a single man is worth those favourite panties that witnessed my first orgies, watched me straddle my first conquests, and tentatively step into my first alien bedrooms. It wasn't a question of price, even if at the time it felt outrageously expensive: the noblest hands, the most precious hands had pulled on its elastic like the strings of a harp. The worthiest of eyes had devoured the plump spectacle of my flesh below the polish of its lace. I had leaked into its material so many times, in the most extravagant of places. At the Baron, chaperoned by Olivier Destelles. A few weeks later, high as a kite, I would drift through Thomas Pariente's apartment starkers but for them and an Hermès scarf. Some years earlier, seeing them for the first time, straight from the precious small Agent Provocateur carrier-bag, Alexandre had remarked that they were my ‘heart-attack panties'. My whole sexual life was inscribed inside the black satin folds. I'd lost weight, put on weight again, and lost it again, but they'd never offended me by becoming too loose or tight. As by miracle, the material adhered to my flesh like a second skin. Those panties were
mine
.

‘Here you are,' I said to Monsieur, with an uneasy smile.

As soon as he held them in his hands, still looking attentively at me, he brought them to his nose, smelling the imprint of my cunt, his languid pupils like those of a perfumer facing the most exquisite of fragrances. This was why I had loved this man, the very reason I had fallen head over heels: the way his face lit up when I opened my legs. The greediness of his lust.

‘These panties are much too beautiful for you to give them to me,' Monsieur noted, as his fingers wrapped themselves around the lace.

‘Wasn't our relationship beautiful too?' I said, with a fatalistic sigh that I instantly felt ridiculous, reciting platitudes like a sitcom actress.

He smiled at me.

As I took my first step towards the door, my body felt surprisingly light, considering I would never see Monsieur again. I was weightless. The wooden floor under my feet indelicately squeaked: I wanted to escape in total silence, unnoticed. I could feel Monsieur's eyes behind me, scanning one last time my pantie-less silhouette (that promise of nudity had always had such a cataclysmic effect on him) and, for a man so at ease with words, he was struggling to somehow break the silence. Maybe he knew deep down inside he no longer had anything left to say. That there was a form of pain, like pulling out a splinter, which was impervious to words.

I opened the door, struggling madly against the thought of turning back. The absence of sounds was the same, in the room and in the corridor. Inside me the silence was screaming. Surrounding me was a silence of mourning. Biting my lips, I turned the handle, a final whiff of Habit Rouge reached me, floating across my cheeks, and that was it.

That was it
.

That feeling of getting away with it cheaply can prove terribly fragile. When I began to walk again, the carpet felt soft and deep, sickeningly soft. The smell of lilies washing over the landing was unbearable, the walls aggressively orange-coloured. I feared hearing Monsieur move behind me, just a few metres away, inside the room. The sound of the door handle turning.

I ran down the steps four at a time, rushed past the reception desk like the breeze, refusing to look around the hotel I would never return to, ever, mumbling ‘thank you, have a good day', my voice a ghost-like trickle (
I've never wanted to reveal the name of this seventeeth
arrondissement
landmark of sorts, mentioning it just brings back the nausea. All I have to do is silently spell out the word and for ten seconds or so the people facing me, the world all around, the music I'm listening to, the silence even, they all freeze, lose colour, turning into those sort of silvery old photographs that cause my heart to tighten
).

It was midday on Rue des Dames. Standing on the small flight of steps I stared ahead at the continuous flow of grey passers-by, gasping for air. All the buildings seemed to rise to terrible heights, their windows like dead eyes. With no great conviction, I put a foot forward and walked down one step and a determined young executive almost bumped into me, instinctively mumbling
‘pardon!
' out of mere habit, and I leapt back like a cat to my original position, on the door's threshold. It felt like being drunk, the way you become terribly clumsy after the third glass. Alone, mostly. Lost. Stranded halfway between two equal catastrophes, on one hand ready to melt back into all the waves of insignificance, on the other the desire to rush back towards the soft, cotton-like heat of the hotel, where Monsieur sat waiting for me, with his wolf-like smile. I'd often wondered if others also experienced the same sort of total loss of motivation, of frames of reference. If italicized sentences came to life in their mind, out of nowhere like they did to me.

If you go back inside it will fuck everything up. But if you run away, it's all the same. So, what are you left with, at the end of the day? Nothing. No desire to read, write, fuck or see people, no inclination to sleep or be alone, so what have I got left, damn? Have I ever really thought through what it would be like to never see Monsieur again? Don't do it. If you do it, you'll scream. You won't see him again, not at the clinic, not at Philippe's, not at the hotel, nor in his car, nowhere. There is no place left on this planet that will bring you together. I loved Monsieur more than anything else in the whole wide world. I will not see him again. Our two lives will now follow parallel tracks, I . . . I will grow older without him being aware of it. I will know nothing of his life. He will forget you, he's bound to. Or worse, he will never forget you.

‘Ouch.'

You will never forget him. All I have left are these memories but oh God I now remember so little, oh God I've even forgotten his face, that face that never appeared to be the same in photographs. I just have fleeting images, and soon they will disappear like all the rest. Even if you write. Writing won't stop time racing by, erasing everything in its passage. What's worse? Forgetting? Or the contrary? But I don't want to, me! I don't want to forget! I don't want him to forget me, dear God, to forget my arse, my smell or all the messages I used to send him, my name and my pitiful devotion, my dog-like devotion to him, I . . . oh fuck, who cares if he forgets me, as I'll NEVER see him again. Breathe. I can't breathe. I'm scared, the fear is killing me. So is the cold. I . . . sit down. You can't allow yourself to collapse to the ground in front of all these strangers. Sit down, light yourself a fag. Hold it between your small trembling fingers. Oh, I just don't want to be myself. I just want to wake up on the day when Monsieur's name will have disappeared, has been expunged from my memory, when the thought of him barely raises a smile on my lips. Will it ever happen? Can I manage it? Will you ever be able to look at a photograph of him without it feeling like a slow-motion slap against your cheeks? I don't want to be me ever again. I don't think I can bear all this pain much longer. Or rather I know I will: I know I will take the Métro like any normal person, that I will find my way back home like a normal person, even if I'm crying or choking or snot is pouring from my nose throughout the journey, because who cares after all? I feel like being sick. I'm going to be sick. Swallow all that saliva down. Breathe, breathe. Don't make the mistake and stop breathing.

If my recollection of that moment is correct, fleeting as it is, it's because Monsieur found me, slumped against the wall, at the top of the steps leading to the hotel door, sheltered away from the passing crowds, my eyes wide open, my cheeks wet with a river of tears, stinging me like lemon juice, choking my anguished sounds inside the cup of my hands. I felt an imperceptible shadow close by me and couldn't care less. I was scared and my stomach was so twisted up inside that I could feel nothing, felt no need to regain any form of dignity. Wildly sobbing under my breath. Everything around me was just too large. I could no longer understand how I was allowed to walk the streets of such a large city on my own. How anyone could trust me in any way.

I glanced to my left, brushing away a wet, salty strand of hair, saw Monsieur and his suit jacket, the careful alignment of his side pocket warped by my scrunched-up panties. I didn't stop crying. He must have known as soon as I had walked out onto the landing that my legs wouldn't take me far. It was of no consequence, I was only twenty-one. An age where you rush ahead in overdrive without ever feeling pain or weariness. It just happens, like that, out of the blue, on hotel steps right in the middle of your mad run to nowhere.

‘I beg you, don't cry,' he said, his voice so dreadfully overflowing with tenderness it hurt. I lowered my hands from my face to try and mumble something and thought, for a moment, that Monsieur was about to touch me, but before I had a chance to say anything, he'd pulled a large bone-coloured silk handkerchief from his inside pocket, his initials C.S. sewn into the bottom right hand corner.

‘Take it,' I heard, and half a second later I was holding between my fingers the most exquisite velvety piece of material Man has ever created, fabric evoking an endless, armless, bodyless embrace, but an embrace nonetheless.

With an effort I summoned up from deep inside my soul, I sketched a thin smile, looked at Monsieur who was also smiling at me, the shadow of grief spreading across his small wrinkles, a sight I had never witnessed before. We looked at each other for ages, impervious to the outside world. Then my heart that I'd already thought shattered broke into a thousand pieces again and I buried my face into the handkerchief that smelled of Guerlain, opened my mouth, but already Monsieur had taken flight, his eyes lowered, hopping down the twelve small steps leading to the street four at a time. Stretching my neck until it hurt, my eyes followed him for a few metres, the blue of his scarf a point of reference, but he soon turned a corner, disappeared as he knew how to do so well, and all that was left was Ellie, rue des Dames, Ellie and her handkerchief smelling of Habit Rouge.