Monsieur (8 page)

Go and tell your uncle that that's why you're standing in front of the clinic today
.

I call Monsieur. I can hear his smile when he says, ‘I'm on my way, darling.'

A blonde secretary stares at me, as if she has overheard our conversation. I have absolutely no intention of justifying my presence to her. I turn to the window and gulp the last drops of my coffee, suddenly filled with the anguish of Tuesday morning. The silence in the small blue room is so oppressive that I start humming as I read the hygiene warnings Blu-tacked to the wall. Someone is walking about behind the door on the left, which leads to the operating theatre. A few steps away from me, the secretary is restless, shuffling her paperwork. I wish my whole face could be pixellated, fearing she might recognize me as Dr Cantrel's niece and want to chat. Fortunately, just as she is about to open her mouth, the mysterious door half opens and Monsieur emerges, regal in surgical scrubs, his hair beneath a blue skullcap. I feel him draw back from taking me in his arms, even though I rush towards him, my cheeks on fire and my eyes shining, as if my lights have been switched on. Monsieur's smile is like a caress, even though his hands remain in his pockets.

The clinic's geography is such that we are invisible to others as we walk a few metres down a twisted corridor. In a flash Monsieur is all over me, his mouth assaulting mine, his tongue working with such speed and determination I almost faint, and lose all sense of place and time. I submit to the urgency of the kiss. It speaks to me, says, ‘I can't resist.' I understand where the subtle mix of repulsion and magnetic attraction comes from: while I'm fascinated by the fact I'm having an affair with such a brilliant and sensual man, I can also see how pathetic it is for him to sleep with such a young girl behind the backs of his wife and kids. Maybe I made it too easy for him or Monsieur isn't much of a seducer. Maybe he tries not to resemble those old guys hanging around the school gates whose hearts are broken by a nymphet. There are times when I see so much pain in his desire that I'm unsure whether I should be flattered or take pity on him. I feel a form of power surge through me, which overwhelms me. Should I use it?

In the changing room Monsieur hands me a pair of pyjamas and watches me with close attention. While I attempt to find some privacy behind the wobbly shelves, he seizes my handbag. ‘I'll put it in the locker, darling. Just keep your mobile.'

For an instant, my heart stops. Hidden by the locker door, I mumble: ‘What did you call me?'

‘I call everyone “darling”,' Monsieur explains, and I feel like slapping his face.

A nurse helps me stuff my ponytail inside the white skullcap. I now look like an egg. Facing a large mirror I try to improve my appearance while keeping an eye on Monsieur. Even though I am trying to be discreet, I'm sure the short brunette standing next to me notices my efforts to look a bit sexier before Monsieur turns to me again. She doesn't seem concerned about it, which suggests to me that I'm not the first young girl to pass through this changing room on the arm of Monsieur. He's unlikely to compromise himself with the young women in blue coats, but no doubt they whisper about his activities behind his back. Monsieur is not the type to be bothered or embarrassed, or to look away when he sees someone he lusts after. He has no fear; this is his kingdom. Women can chatter away to their hearts' content, but for now he's dragging me towards the cavernous lift carrying the operating staff to the theatre. Surely they know this is a moment of truth. And, of course, as soon as the doors close Monsieur, so immense next to me in the restricted space, pins me back with a kiss that tastes of so many forbidden things, but that's nothing in comparison with the long fingers slithering beneath my pyjama jacket, the feeling I have of slowly collapsing into a hot bath and my muscles turning to jelly. This man is like a symphony of inquisitive fingers spreading across my breasts and inside my trousers. I put up a token struggle, my face flattened against the side of the lift, Monsieur's growing erection grazing the small of my back. The problem is that desire is rising fast inside me, triggered by his feverish groping. As the lift doors open, I'm panting hard. Any observer would have concluded in a flash that I was getting wetter by the minute at the mere thought of that eternal cliché: a masked anonymous medic seeking to enslave me by trying to grip my wrists behind my back. Not a single word passes between us, the quiet broken only by our uniforms rustling, a silent dialogue.

‘Do calm down, Monsieur! Not here, not in the lift, not in the clinic!'

‘I'll do whatever I want with you, right here and now, whether you like it or not.'

‘Please, I beg you, stop!'

‘Quiet, learn to give yourself! At least a little!'

The whole scene lasts about six seconds, but I'm praying no one will notice that the eminent surgeon has a pronounced hard-on, and the small masked blonde girl at his side is evidently responsible for it.

As soon as the doors open, I recognize some of the orderlies and anesthetists. It's extraordinary how elegant and noble Monsieur looks, cruising down the corridors of the surgical block; he's lost the superior air he usually wears, as if he owns the place. Just the way he moves, spreading his particular scent that even the ether can't obscure. There is something magical about Monsieur's movements as he strolls from room to room, leaving his mark.

I find a corner where I am out of the way while he introduces me as a literature student here to research a paper on the body (I can imagine the obligatory face-to-face discussion with Monsieur behind the locked doors of his study). It's crazy, all these women here at his beck and call, instinctively adjusting his scrubs, preparing his instruments, voicing his name as they soothe the nerves of the first patient. All the kindness, the lack of condescension Monsieur displays in the presence of the person now lying on the operating table is unlike his usual rather cynical attitude. How can he move so quickly from arrogance to this? He's now bending over the table, whispering instructions into his microphone, such a benevolent picture of kindness I'd be willing to have my nose shattered into a thousand pieces if only to be smiled at like that.

‘Can we go ahead, Doctor?' a nurse asks, opening a pack of sutures.

And the ballet begins. Beneath his surgical mask, teasing me, Monsieur reminds me: ‘If you begin to feel faint, you can always walk out and sit in the corridor.'

‘Don't worry,' I answer, with a dire attempt to emulate his honeyed smile. ‘I don't faint easily.'

His gaze is insistent, so, in a tiny voice, I add: ‘Some years ago, not that long, I wanted to become a pathologist.'

‘A pathologist?'

His eyes are like fingers touching my skin under the surgical blouse, almost laughing because this tiny blonde girl with her pink bum and careless words had considered spending her life in the realm of dead, silent flesh.

‘How amusing,' Monsieur says, with irony, while my cheeks grow redder by the second. Then, holding his scalpel, he leans over the man sleeping below him, as if suddenly aware that his tone almost betrayed us. The fear and awe inside my chest are coming to the boil at the elaborate precision of his movements. Amazing. Now that I am aware of this, I will be able to concentrate better on the ways in which he manipulates me, assess whether his surgical skill can be detected among the folds of our sheets.

‘If you happen to faint,' Monsieur continues, without glancing at me, ‘we have everything here to bring you back to life.'

‘Blood won't make me faint.'

‘Oh, there are many reasons for fainting – pain, hunger . . .'

Still not looking at me, his large hands dancing above the operating table, hesitating briefly between instruments, he continues his inventory, but I already know where it's leading.

‘. . . fear . . .'

I lower my eyes, red under the surgical mask. Would he dare?

‘. . . pleasure . . .'

I bite the inside of my cheeks and blood floods my mouth.

‘. . . and oppression.'

His large grey eyes fly across me, watching me attentively, defying me.

‘Although, technically, there is little difference between fainting and a swoon.'

I try to pull myself away from this invisible battle of wills, oddly fascinated by how Monsieur is playing with me, echoing every perverse word I have used in my text messages to him. I suspect he is grinning under his mask, as he returns to his work, and my heart pounds. God knows how many times this morning he's almost given me a heart-attack.

He doesn't allow the nurses to put in the sutures, stitching the wound himself with fierce, gentle determination.

‘Just imagine how important the nose is. The way it punctuates a face. The size and beauty of the scar are of paramount importance.'

Monsieur says ‘beauty' where others would have used ‘appearance': a subtle nuance that transports me back to a moment in the small blue room. He was caressing my hips, and I noticed that my naked skin was caught in the unforgiving glare of a band of sunlight. But I couldn't have cared less. I smiled. ‘Are you looking at my stretch marks?'

And Monsieur, ever serious, whispered into my neck: ‘They're pretty, you're striped. Like a little tiger.'

As soon as he puts down his instruments, a nurse reminds him of the visits to be made on the lower floor. Back to the lift, and its intolerable pressure. Before he's even touched me, I feel his hardness against me, a hardness that will only increase when, a few hours later, I send him a text full of my usual filth. I savour the intoxicating aroma of coffee on his breath. On the ground floor, I'm shaking with need next to him. ‘But what the fuck am I going to do? Tell me.'

A rhetorical question to which he responds with a deep sigh, his eyes caressing me.

I'm sitting in the waiting room, waiting for him, staring into space, when my mobile buzzes. Monsieur, telling me: ‘I really like you!'

(Even though these pyjamas don't suit me, I'm as naked as the day I was born beneath them. When he noticed this, Monsieur nearly went mad.)

Encouraged by the knowledge that I'm unlikely to be violated inside the clinic, I send him an obscene answer, and quickly regret it. He reappears, his face unreadable, just like a doctor after his rounds. But I know he's on fire inside: I know this man is capable of performing operations or anything requiring the utmost concentration while still allowing other things to fester in his mind. (Dear God, I am no doubt closely involved in them. I shudder to imagine what would happen to me right now if everyone in the clinic were suddenly to disappear.)

By text, I had said he was a dirty old perv. In the lift, Monsieur pretends he's angry, as if he can't perceive the affection beneath the teasing insults.

‘This is all going to end badly,' he growls, pinching my nipples under the jacket. ‘Next time you're available to me, there'll be major spanking.'

Being spanked by Monsieur would likely entail black and blue fingermarks across my arse for at least a fortnight. I'll have to come up with some lie for my dear but naïve Andrea (maybe a fall down the stairs?). But now getting myself unscathed to the end of this corridor looks like a perilous undertaking. I'm already giggling, knowing my nipples are so hard they're visible through the material of the jacket. I just don't know how Monsieur can persuade people to ignore his spectacular erection. And here he is again, the mighty professor gliding into another ward, to examine someone's stomach. I bombard him with, I hope, relevant questions. Amazingly, while he never ceases to open, spread, cut or cauterize, he answers me politely. Not a trace of the condescension I've noticed in surgeons much younger than him, always talking down to me and seldom explaining anything, as if to emphasize the gulf between their world and mine. On Tuesday morning, he showed me how breast implants were inserted, cupping my breast in his hand. I felt like a mannequin of flesh being spread open in an amphitheatre full of medical students. I swooned.

In the main operating theatre, Monsieur's next patient, a woman, is being given her anesthetic.

‘Come and have a look. It's really interesting,' he says, sensing that I'm flagging.

I make myself as small as possible, standing in a corner, while the young woman sobs. The anesthetist, whom I'm sure I know, sticks the needle into the white hollow of her arm, causing her to shriek. No doubt the anesthetist has to go through this procedure at least five times a day, but she looks sincere as she sympathizes with the patient.

‘Is the anesthetic painful?' I ask her, while the orderlies wheel the bed towards the ward, where Monsieur is joking with another patient.

‘It is for her,' answers Dr Simon. (That's it. I remember now that I held on to her legs when I was younger and watched Philippe do liposuction on some enormous woman! God!)

And while she diplomatically explains to me that this patient is something of a drama queen, I hesitate to look her in the eyes from beneath my mask, as any normal person would. Since I arrived here earlier, I have come to understand how much your eyes can betray you when the rest of your face is blank. There are wrinkles at the sides of her eyes when she smiles. If her memory is as good as mine, I'm done for. There's a good chance she's dined at our house: my uncle is always inviting colleagues to his Sunday lunches. I can't tell if she has unmasked me or not, as she attentively watches all the others come and go, chattering. But every time our eyes accidentally connect, doubt assails me: there is a moment when it looks as if she is about to ask me to remind her of my name (and who I am and why I am here, all questions to which I would have no answer). Then I hear Monsieur ask where the hell I am, like an angry father who's misplaced his brat in some supermarket. Hearing ‘Ellie' called, Isabelle Simon's eyes pierce me like knives. I'm truly fucked. She's put two and two together: it's the young Cantrel girl, and what on earth is she doing here chaperoned by the sprightly Dr S? Knowing the man, it's certainly not out of the kindness of his heart. Evidently, the situation is simple and despicable: the young girl and the family man are having an affair. Who cares how it might have begun and what it might mean to them? All that matters is that they're impudently advertising it here of all places.